


Cupboard of Curiosity

by MarionRav



Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Families of Choice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 03:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 24,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8041255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarionRav/pseuds/MarionRav
Summary: When my friend first asked for this story, he asked for Wong and Strange becoming friends and more of a focus on people versus magic.  I described the rough draft back at him as basically what'd happen if all those 90's "magic shop in a weird town" books had Dr. Strange in them.  So, that's what this is.  I don't say these are the canon characters, or how they met in canon (or that Clea Strange is in the story that much at all.)The story starts, as some do, with a flu.  Or a passenger pigeon.  Accounts differ.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



“The Bai Ze was monstrous and cat like, with a human face. It has nine eyes arranged on his flanks and face, and a crown of six horns. The Bai Ze told the emperor the assaults and asylums of all known supernatural creatures, how to combat them, and then prophesied that his image could stymie an oncoming plague. The emperor recorded all eleven thousand five hundred and twenty creatures into a tome. Only fragments remain of that priceless work.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

The orders from the spirits were simple. Gain access to the hospital in Farrisville. Kill the wizard king who’s going there daily. He endangers the world.

At first, Joel didn’t believe it. Wizards, sure, he could believe in them. He grew up in a monastery in Tibet that had a wizard, and wizard students, and he learned, early on, the trouble a student could get into. How many times had he heard the orders to not engage in black magic and not to make deals with demons? And yet, there’d be another student, being an idiot, and the monastery would deal with it.

It wasn’t that hard to get access to the hospital. Nursing classes, when you’ve got spirits behind the scenes, didn’t take that long. Joel could almost call the convenient steps that got him in place as a nurse to be pleasant, if he ignored that he was on the night shift and the slow roiling boil that was the orders. Joel actually saw the wizard king without realizing it. The spirits said that the wizard king had a luxurious house in Greenwich village (three stories, a dome, a huge round window, and with the entire top floor dedicated to magical arts.) So why would he have looked twice at a “professor” interested in the hospital library?

The professor didn’t look old enough or rich enough to be a wizard. He had a dapper bit of facial hair that would’ve looked better on a minor TV villain in the 60’s and a bit of grey near his temples. He didn’t use magic casually to get around slow moving lines, or to avoid dropping books. He bought the same coffee that Joel bought, and seemed to have the same bad luck on missing out on the excellent cinnamon rolls that would show up on Mondays.

Then the flu started, and he had people’s lives on his hands. Still no wizard king doing obvious magic, and he wasn’t going to kill a normal guy just because the spirits thought he was the right one. It was four days into the outbreak for him to finally find the man, crouching on the roof with something around the mayor’s daughter’s throat and a human faced monster standing on thin cow like legs nearby. The monster had eyes along his sides which blinked slowly. The wizard king was talking to the monster in terribly accented Mandarin Chinese.

So Joel punched the “professor.”

The “professor” just started talking to him. Fast and rapid explanations without moving closer. Gave up the girl, stood on the edge of the roof with his ridiculous tails on his formal jacket flapping in the wind like some malformed raven, and tried to rattle off the “why” and “how” and “what.” Joel frankly didn’t remember half of it. Just the tightness in his lungs as he yelled that the spirits had sent him down to find the wizard king.

“Ah, well then,” the wizard king said like Joel invited him to dinner. “Hold this. Let me stop this plague spirit and deal with the storm, and then we’ll talk.”

He could’ve killed him. Instead, he stood there holding a laminated card with the picture of the Bai Ze while the real thing (six horned, cow-like, watching him from its flanks) ambled through the air with the wizard king. The storm raged around them and the sun was just starting to set tinting the sky blood red. Then, he took the mayor’s daughter back to her room.

Joel was a night nurse, in scrubs that were a mismatched green and multicolored polka dots and sensible shoes which could be tossed in the autoclave. He was in his early thirties, had at least four obvious scars from his younger years, and some mild warnings to watch his blood pressure. He was dead tired, and there were too many people in the hospital on oxygen.

He could’ve killed the wizard king and been done with it all. Instead, he walked back down to see what was going on when the storm stopped.

The three of them (him, exhausted, the wizard king, bleeding, and some child, gaunt,) were outside the hospital, and the last red tint of the sunset was fading from the sky. It was cold, and the wizard king was a long lean form all in black. With the ozone from the storm, and the silence, it felt like time had stopped. The wizard king could’ve been one of the demons Joel remembered from his childhood. The only thing that didn’t fit that was the wizard fumbling to attach a laminated card depicting the Bai Ze to a lanyard with none of the grace he expected. There was blood on his jaw, from when Joel punched him. A scrawny local kid was watching the wizard king be defeated by a little metal clip.

It wasn’t purely the fact that the wizard king had the mayor’s daughter that made Joel want to punch him. It also wasn’t the fact that the Powers That Be (or whatever he was calling the spirits this month) asked him to kill the wizard king. What else do you do when you find a man holding an unconscious girl while trying to do something to her throat? He thought the red ribbon was blood, or that the man was strangling her for the odd creature before him.

It was not like magic and Joel never crossed paths before the PTB appeared. His father told stories about the Ancient One, and he’d seen magic in action in Tibet. However, the wizard king’s talk about Acheri with the plague and Bai Ze agreeing to cure it - all of that may as well have been advanced quantum theory for all that he was prepared to listen to it.

“You should probably get some rest,” Joel said mostly to the wizard king’s jaw. He could’ve killed the man right then.

“Ah - sorry.” The wizard flashed a smile at him and murmured something in that terrible Mandarin accented Chinese. There was no reason for Joel to feel so tense and anxious. The mayor’s daughter was back in her bed, and the Bai Ze was long gone. The wizard king leaned down to help the kid put on the lanyard, and she ran toward the playground. It was too late for a kid to be out, but half the town was down with the flu. Maybe her parents let her out to go play and she ended up at the hospital playground for some reason. The rain had smoothed out the entire sand pit, and the cheap laminated card flapped in the wind along with her hair as she knelt down in the sand.

“So the flu’ll stop, you said.” Joel brushed his hand over his knuckles, feeling the old scars, and wondered if he should punch the wizard king again. There was a child here now, though, and she didn’t seem to be in danger.

“The story goes that the Yellow Emperor went east, and met the Bai Ze--which is more catlike than cowlike in some of the stories, but I’m not going to argue with the real article about what he should look like. He gave something like eleven thousand monsters and their attacks to the Emperor, and then swore that his image would cure diseases.” The wizard looked like he wasn’t sure Joel wanted to listen. 

Frankly, it wasn’t as annoying as Joel thought it would be. He made an encouraging noise under his breath, since the wizard seemed to be waiting.

“The Bai Ze’s agreed to help with the disease,” said the wizard. He never called it a flu, and it did seem to be a complex bacterial strain along with a strong resistant virus. “The red ribbons on the kids can probably go off once people start going better. It was just the fastest way to protect against an Acheri.”

“That’s - Chippewa, right?” Joel was guessing, from some dimly remembered book that mostly involved things with knives for nails and things that nailed knives.

“Anishinaabeg, I think, is also correct,” the wizard said like this was normal. He said something of the same story back on the roof. He moved over to fish around in the first aid kit dumped on the table to bandage his arm. “But yes. I believe that’s the closest identification I can make. An Acheri came into town. I believe the road project started all of this.”

He looked outside at the child playing in the sand, and then over at Joel. There didn’t seem to be any kind of crackling out of control powers at work, and the wizard didn’t look like he needed another punch.

Joel settled on saying, “You gave me a scare. I didn’t know what you were planning.” The old scars on his knuckles itched, and he wished he could go home again. It wasn't really feasible, since the PTB made it pretty clear that he at least needed to find their wizard king.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t even sure the Bai Ze would understand me.” The wizard grimaced. “You know what the tragic thing is, about the Acheri? As a concept, I mean. In general. At least as the story goes.”

Joel really didn’t want to hear the importance of considering the diversity in mystical spirits. What did it matter what the story was if in practice, it was a spirit that killed people? Why would a wizard king with so much power allow Farrisville to have a horrible flu sweep through it if it was all just due to one creature?

“They’re children who died, from neglect or violence. And then they approach others, and kill them.” The wizard’s hands were shaking. Was he afraid? “They never attack the person who caused their death. Because it wasn’t just that one person. It was the community that failed them.”

“Or they’re a plague spirit, and they just kill,” Joel said.

The wizard looked back at him, and then started toward the sand pit. “Maybe. But the Bai Ze will protect from that.”

Joel leaned on the wall until he couldn’t excuse it any longer.

The girl was gaunt and thin, and she didn’t speak any language he’d ever heard. She knocked over sand castles once the wizard showed her how to build them. The next morning, the wizard and the girl were gone. The flu took the rest of the weekend to clear up.

The orders didn’t change.


	2. Chapter 2

“The research into demons is not the realm of this book. Obviously, Buer, the tenth spirit, is neither a shedim, nor a jinn, nor an asura. To categorize one as another, is folly at best. One theory is that a demon is not any categorizable entity as much as the interaction of an occult power on a human. As Heraclitus spoke, ‘character is for man his daimon.’”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

The Powers That Be tended to talk to Joel in Farrisville. He got told, suddenly in the middle of looking at a gently used sofa, that he needed to move to Garry’s Glen. The wizard king was in Garry’s Glen for some kind of wizardly event, which Joel couldn’t guess what it was, and the spirits didn’t really think in mortal enough terms to explain it clearly. Apparently the man had bought property.

So they got him a new identity, and he had the option of a couple of jobs. He ended up picking Jacob Wong, who had an aunt in Farrisville who read tarot cards and was delighted to have him back in town. She wished he still had that charming motorcycle, and he offered to renew his license. She promised to take him down for the test once he graduated from the police academy.

Sometimes he wondered if her Jacob ever existed, or if she did, before he moved there. He sent her a card on the holidays, and she was delighted.

Police detective sounded like a good option in a tourist heavy town like Garry’s Glen. He could stand to talk to teens about strangers acting strange, and he’d have an excuse to talk to the wizard king. The orders were still there, like being wired for an undercover operation.

He knew he should add, “And get close enough to kill him,” to that, but in his mind, all he was seeing was that Acheri. She was still hanging around Farrisville. Last time he saw her, she was wearing a pretty locket with the Bai Ze’s image, had a handful of textbooks from the high school, and a massive sunhat. Her sundress was one of those hand painted ones from Garry’s Glen. She still looked a bit too gaunt and a bit - he knew that she knew that he knew who she was, but she still let him walk with her across the street when they passed each other. She never mentioned the fact that he punched the wizard king.

So, there he was at about ten at night, in Garry’s Glen, and quietly enjoying chatting up one of the Buddhist monks about a graffiti problem. Knowing Tibetan and a couple of Chinese dialects did come in handy in Garry's Glen. Then the police radio band lit up like the Fourth of July. It started somewhere downtown, with reports of something way too fast on the streets, like someone with a baseball bat on a moped or something smashing windows. Garry’s Memorial Hospital was a mess. Someone else said it was a werewolf (a deputy snorted in the middle of getting his coat on and said it was the wrong time of the month for that.)

The path of the vandalism was pretty near the wizard king’s property. It was some junk shop called the Cupboard of Curiosity, and he was going by the name Mr. Steven.

By the time that Detective Wong got on the scene, he had a group frowning at some security footage from the cafe. “Definitely clears Mr. Steven. You’ve got a nursing thing, right, Detective Wong?” the officer asked him. Her boots were glimmering from some silvered glass dust. Mirrored glass at the supermarket, likely.

Mr. Steven, of course, was that “professor” and the wizard king. Wong hadn’t had a chance to do more than walk past his shop so far. From what he saw, the place was banks of bangles, postcards, and scarves, and the store's name looked like it was a school project involving stencils. Enthusiastic, but a bit lopsided.

“I do. Accreditation for the state as well,” Jacob said. The video was blurry, but it showed the big puddle of light from the street light. A door opened from the wizard king’s shop, and he stepped out, looked up the street, and then something about seven feet high was there for one frame, in mid step toward him, and the next it looked like Mr. Steven had been thrown through the window. “What shape is Mr. Steven in? That looks brutal there.”

“Arm’s got pretty badly cut. He’s swearing he just needs some bandaging, and the hospital’s a mess.” The officer ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t like signing off on it, but I definitely don’t want to toss him in triage if it’s not that bad.”

“I helped a bit,” said some local woman. She was helping with sweeping up and boarding up windows. “I’m Valerie. The wizard said he got rid of the demon, you know, so we’re all good now. He’s got a bad hand tremor thing though - some old nerve damage, so some help would be good. My eyes aren’t good enough for that.”

The cops neither scoffed at the word demon or looked that worried.

“I can look, if he’s willing,” Jacob said. He’d learned first aid in Tibet, in the monastery, and his nursing degree was actually real. Most of the time in Tibet it was training accidents, unless if the Ancient One had another student making stupid choices. “It looks like I don’t have much else to do unless you’ve got another broom.”


	3. Chapter 3

“To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.”

Novalis 1829

If you asked Strange, the start of things was when they found a passenger pigeon in Garry’s Glen. Ignoring the probability factor of a living passenger pigeon, the bird--plump and complacent as she was--was highly magical, like any summoned animal.

On the scale of magic that is dangerous, obviously an extinct bird wasn’t the end of the world. However, it was worrying because of what it implied--namely, that the actions of someone or something (or some dimensional weakness in reality itself) resulted in school children finding a bird that should not have existed.

After the pigeon, Strange ended up in Farrisville, a neighboring town, to check some leads and to simply get a feel for things.

Later, Strange asked Wong, and, for him, the start of things was in Farrisville. That was two years ago, now. The passenger pigeon wasn’t really a thing in the news anymore.

Two years ago in Farrisville, Strange was a professor, interested in rare books and checking out a manuscript collection in a library funded by the hospital. Shortly after he arrived, there was an outbreak of the flu. It was unseasonably late in the year for the flu, and it was a dangerously strong one.

Wong had been uprooted from where he was living by a group of spirits who told him, on no uncertain terms, to get close to Strange (and, ideally, carry out their plans.) He took up the name Joel, got a job as a night shift nurse, and blearily had coffee in the hospital cafe while Strange passed him by. Strange felt the magic on him, but mostly just remembered him as a tired nurse on the night shift.

This month, Wong looked like he was stretching his meals a bit too thin. His name tag said Detective Jacob Wong. Officially, he was interviewing him about what happened that night, and giving him some first aid. The town's doctor still hadn't woken up and the hospital’s windows were gone. Strange had shut the curtains on the back end of the shop. Up front, Valerie hummed while she was working with the plywood to cover the broken window. He owed her the world for not asking why he had a ritualistic set of candles around a book of crossword puzzles.

Strange was talking, mostly because he didn't want to watch the detective picking glass out of his arm. "You were Joel, last time, weren't you?" Back at the hospital, Joel was gangly, wearing a cheerfully spotted set of scrubs. He said “they” or the “powers that be” told him about Strange. He looked thin and tired then, and just as thin and tired now.

"And you were a professor. It’s Jacob now." Wong flashed a cramped smile. "Were you woken up by the gang breaking windows?"

"It wasn't a gang."

Wong raised an eyebrow. "Official story was that Farrisville had a bad case of the flu, and people in the hospital had hallucinations from the fever. You said it was a Bai Ze."

"A Bai Ze warding off a plague brought on by an Acheri awoken by the freeway tunnel project," Strange said quietly. "This one was merely an extra-planar demon with an obsession with the letter 'e'."

Dimensional portals weren’t uncommon, and unfortunately there was science accidentally creating them, and magic working around the limitations of what science knew. It was hard to explain to scientists exactly how awkward it was to have science creating an unreliable method which would close a half dozen avenues for magic to do the same thing. On the other hand, science worked with thermodynamics and quantum mechanics and not the delicate balance of debts that magic worked by. The demon, unlike most dimensional travellers, seemed oddly focussed on things that were actually perceivable by mortals. It felt almost like this was a deliberate thing.

Wong frowned and fished around with some tweezers on the glass. "Working alone? He must've been fast, since we got the first report about windows breaking at ten. The video we got just shows something tall and you flying. No teens at all? They picked up a handful of kids who were camping next to the river."

"Not smashing the windows." Strange leaned back a little. The demon (an awkward term that dated back to the era of alchemists edging on the edges of magic and science) was huge, and had a hair trigger temper. It wanted a fight, and Strange was strong enough to be interesting. "Of course, mine had no 'e' on it, so the demon threw me through it. What brought you to this precinct?"

"They asked me to move out here, since you were working in Garry's Glen," Wong said and shrugged. "It's been busy ever since that passenger pigeon was found. It took a bit to get accredited, but I'm now on the police force."

"You look like they've been working you to the bone," Strange said. Both the spirits dabbling in Wong’s life, and the police force, he meant, and Wong looked up at him and flashed a grin like he understood. "Will you stay long enough for me to heat something up?"

"I think the young woman from the cooperative farm brought some food into the station," Wong said, "But, yes. I suspect the PTB want to know how you're doing." He still looked troubled as he got up to wash his hands off. "I thought you'd be more - I don't know. Upset. I was a git when I met you in Farrisville."

"I was clinging to the roof of the hospital holding the mayor's daughter." Strange pointed out. And really, Wong hadn’t been anything more than tired and worried after punching Strange in the jaw. "It didn't look particularly great. So which group are your PTB?" 

Joel, last time, had been fluent in Tibetan, but he understood Strange's Mandarin accented Chinese fairly well. Strange’s knowledge of Tibetan was pretty fragmentary, since most of it was learned while he was studying with the Ancient One and most of the lessons were magically translated to start with. His Chinese came from a book on tape series. Using magical translation options wasn’t really a great idea in magically sensitive situations. (Planning how to handle a plague with someone the shape of a lumpy, overly eyed and ostentatiously horned bull with a human face was surreal. Surprisingly efficient though, once his Chinese was understandable.) Wong called Strange a wizard king, which didn't really narrow it down as to which supernatural group was interested in him.

"Hamir, my father, knew the Ancient One in Tibet when he was teaching. The PTB are worried you'll become a mad wizard king. Or die. Though I doubt a wizard king would be running a trinket shop like this. I’m not sure who they’re with? They didn’t think it mattered to tell me." Wong got to his feet. "So why are you going by Vincent Steven here?"

"I guess it's probably why you're using Jacob right now. Needed a name while I was living in Garry's Glen, and didn't want to use my normal one." Strange flexed his hands carefully. The tension of the bandages reminded him of . . . . 

When Strange bought the shop, it was a former jewelry store. The owner tossed in a small safe and some of the cases to sweeten the sale. Prior to the demon using him to smash it, the window read "Cupboard of Curiosity." The first time Strange messed awkwardly with stencils, and the window was smashed by a wild hunt (never let a supernaturally active town do a trumpet competition.) The second time the stencils were better, and then - well - Strange was having the remains of his window picked out of his arms.

Demons tended to be limited in what they could touch, if they weren’t entirely in this dimension, but that didn’t mean that the limitations were impossible to surmount.

The shop sold a mix of harmless placebos and benign materials. For the most part, his clientele were local hippies stopping by after visiting the Cooperative Grocery Store and Community Farm, or curious teenagers looking to giggle at the hammer of Thor pendants. Occasionally someone would come in looking for a good luck charm from their homeland. They were his favorites, since usually they noticed that Garry's Glen was an odd place.

The shop smelled of asafoetida and myrrh, with an undercurrent of the rose water he’d frantically splashed around while banishing the demon. It did not smell of gasoline, or overheated metal from the car wreck. There was no reason for his shoulder blades to itch and his hands to ache other than the glass. Garry’s Glen was safe as anywhere he could be.

Garry's Glen was a small community with a good theater scene that’d exploded in size in the 70's. Mutant rights people moved in running a play talking about equality, a group of Buddhist monks started a vegan restaurant and temple, and five different popular bands retired to join in with the newcomers. While the growth wasn't peaceful, it could've gone a lot worse, and even the original four families of the area got to like the newcomers. Better shopping, second-hand clothes stores, bookstores - there was a lot to like in Garry's Glen.

The wreck was a long time ago. Strange could barely remember Hamir as someone who maybe had glasses and always clutched books to his chest. Wong was staring at him with a hand cupped over the scars on his knuckles and an expression that was exhaustion mixed with something.

The Ancient One had been his first real teacher in magic, and most of his time in Tibet was a mess of snow, frustration, and the magical equivalent of listening to theoretical physics taught in a language you don’t know. "Thank you for the help,” he said eventually.

Jacob followed him back toward the kitchen when he moved toward it. “You’re sure you want to cook with those bandages? Your hands are shaking.”

“The tremor’s normal.” Strange set up the coffee pot. His kitchen was at least clean (he had to mix up the required materials to banish the demon.) It was a long narrow galley style kitchen all in metal cabinets with local blue glazed tiles, but the nook at the end was cozy in cold weather and perfect for pouring over books. “Nerve damage.”

“What happened? Did the Acheri -”

“Oh no, this was a car accident. As unlikely as it sounds, it lead to me learning magic.” Emptied his bank accounts and disrupted his life as well, but that sounded like complaining when you’re talking to a mundane man being ordered by spirits. Strange tried to keep his voice light. He dug through the cabinets. “Soup sound good? I can reheat some noodles in it.”

“That sounds - frankly the coffee and the quiet isn’t a bad start.” Jacob helped with the mugs. Strange tried to not see if he looked like it was out of pity. “So how much of that stuff out there actually has - any kind of mystical power? In your shop, I mean.” He was mostly gesturing at the display of pendants. Thor’s hammer was a quite popular thing for bachelorette parties.

“Most of it could, in a way. Belief is a powerful thing.” Strange settled on some broth, the roasted veggies from dinner, and the noodles. Considering that the adrenaline was wearing off, it was about as fancy as his arms could handle. “Most of the trinkets are benign in the long run though. No point in making things worse out here.”

“You’re really convinced Garry’s Glen is dangerous, huh? It’s been what - two years now? They were saying you had some luxurious place up near New York.” Wong seemed to have a better idea how much pain he was in. Spirits pushing you around weren’t great for the ego, but it was odd that Wong seemed to think that Strange hated him. Maybe he didn’t realize that this wasn’t the first time Strange ran into people cornered by magic.

“It’s a pretty nice house, yes, but I think Garry’s Glen needs me more than my library does. I’ve been following the trail of a copy of the History of Animals.” Strange spread his hands out against the counter and concentrated on just watching the soup heat up. The use of ‘wizard king’ and the fixation on luxury didn’t sound like Wong’s PTB thought much of him. Nothing unique there. “Did you hear about it?”

Wong shook his head and slid a mug of coffee over to him. “Vaguely. I know it’s rare, and not every animal in it was - mundane?”

“Or even of this dimension,” Strange said. He balanced the mug with his other hand and sipped. “Supposedly, a copy was in the Library of Alexandria. As the library burned, the pages summoned every creature recorded in it, and that was part of the reason why so many books were lost. It may be the cause of that passenger pigeon. But it’s -” Strange was dimly aware that Wong might not even believe in half of what he’s talking about, or care to hear it.

“You’re so down to earth about all of this,” Wong said with a smile. “It’s been a long time since I was in the monastery hearing about magic.”

Strange raised an eyebrow. “You were told the theory of belief, weren’t you? The idea that half the power in magic is that you yourself believe that it would work.” He pulled over some stools. “You all right with the counter? Kitchen table’s got my coat on it, and needs a scrubbing.” His arms took most of the brunt of going through the glass, and he honestly wasn’t really coherent enough to see how the coat looked when he took it off.

Wong made a noise, but at least he didn’t sound like he thought Strange couldn’t manage with things. “I can help with that. I still think you should hit up the hospital.” He checked two cabinets before he found bowls. “I’ve heard about the idea of belief. So I guess - you want me to know about the possibility of a book summoning extinct birds, but not the world, because then it -”

“Well, say it’s inter-dimensional oddities - some kind of portal problem. That’s why we had the demon here, and a cockatrice in the gym.”

“A what?” Wong stared at Strange, and gestured sharply. Apparently the man had hit his impossible things after breakfast limits. Strange would deny to his dying day that he jumped a little when Wong noisily started moving chairs and sweeping up the medical supplies. Wong was just setting things up. It was just that they’d be using the table. “All right. Clean shirts?”

Strange pointed over to the laundry room. “There’s some hanging up in there. You really don’t need to -” It wasn’t uncommon for civilians to suddenly want things to be as normal as possible when faced with an excess of mystical entities of any sort. In a way, Strange didn’t mind it himself. His arms were throbbing in time with his pulse and his shoulder still ached.

“You’re making dinner. And you’re -” Wong trailed off. “I’ve dealt with a lot of deadlines and them yelling at me to do things this instant. You’re the better of the options. In a way, I’d thank whoever’s got that book of animals, since I had two years and a steady paycheck.”

“No real reason why I’ve got to be an option for you. I’ve got a terrible bedside manner on good days.” Strange peeled his shirt off and headed to move his coat off the table. It looks like it mostly got the hail of glass from the window breaking, and rose water on it. Powers That Be, or whatever you wanted to call interested spirits, weren’t uncommon when you were a high powered wizard. After all, you were basically the equivalent of a small town waking up at the idea of a big business bringing in jobs, or some major politician deciding to stare at your flood and possibly bring in money for it. That, mind you, was a good day.

Wong came back from the laundry and blinked at Strange like he’d never seen him before. Strange was still wearing an undershirt tinted slightly pink from washing it with a red shirt, and had his arms mummified thanks to the glass removal. Wong was mostly dressed like an accountant with a crisp red tie. Kind of boney in the shoulders, and some slight scarring on the back of his left hand like he scraped his knuckles as a kid. Strange looked older than him (he was, but functional immortality changed the rules for that.) “Here - put this on.” He passed Strange a t-shirt with the words ‘kale-eater’ on it. “I assumed this wasn’t priceless.”

“It’s from the co-op.” Strange tugged on the t-shirt. “That’s a good idea though. I don’t doubt your medical skills, but I still reek of rose water.” He headed over to serve the soup. “I’ll probably be here for a while. In this town, I mean. Running this shop. I don’t know if that’ll convince your PTB to calm down about me.”

“It might.” Wong picked up his spoon as he sat down on the kitchen stool. “I might pop by though. Just . . . .”

“I won’t ask you to help out. Your life is your own, Mr. Wong,” Strange said quietly. “I think I’m doing good work out here, but I won’t ask anything of you.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction.”

Novalis 1829

The Monday night class at the community college was officially a lecture. He was using “Vincent Stephen” instead of - oh - pulling out credentials of being the Sorcerer Supreme. So, it was officially a lecture from a professional in a community on his own time. He had about eight students and a weird competition going on with the attendance rate of his class versus the cold fusion lecture across the hall.

The only other lecture at his time of night was one about angels being secretly aliens (or Sumerians powering Atlantis with quartz?) The last time he saw the classroom, they had a surprisingly coherent explanation of the particle in a box portion of quantum mechanics.

Needless to say, the night started with a discussion of Russian folklore, and then there was suddenly screaming down the hall and slugs pouring out the door. Valerie did an amazing job of keeping people calm, and didn't even panic when someone started screaming about a hellish mouth inside a portal. Dimensional portal cleanup unfortunately worked better with access to the sky. It looked, at least, like the slugs were gone, and there was no remaining dimensional instabilities.

Still, he was fairly certain Wong never expected to be helping him down from the greenhouse roof. Wong’s first question was, “Slugs?”

“None up here. I took care of the portal.” Strange trailed off. He got up on the roof via a boost from two ladies from the rowing team once they had the mandala set up. Explaining what happened could be awkward if there were other police officers with Wong. Last he heard, Valerie told him she was getting a ladder for him and she'd handle stuff. He could fly, but he didn't have his cape, and this was Garry's Glen. Mundane stuff summoned magic far too often to start with. “Jacob?” he asked and leaned against one of the boxes on the roof so he could splay his hands against the metal and hide the tremor.

“Yeah, it’s still Jacob. Detective Wong, actually, if you’d want a title.” Wong climbed off the ladder and on to the roof. “So, the story I got was that the biology lab had escaping slugs.”

“In a way. It was actually the cold fusion class.” Strange walked over to join him, and managed to not trip over the vent stacks in the roof. “They opened a portal to a dimension that seemed to be mostly banana slugs.”

“Was that magic or science?”

“It’s impossible for magic to duplicate anything discovered by science.” Which was the honest truth. Obviously, science could take on the trappings of magic and accidents or Garry’s Glen could turn something meant to be scientific into magic. All Strange had was a mess of quartz and nickel that somehow ended up making a portal, and it wasn’t a spell that he knew.

Wong ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He looked like the exact details of how magic and science interacted could wait. “Was it deliberate on their part?”

“I doubt it. As far as I know, there’s no earthly portal technology that works like that.” Strange looked down the ladder. “I don’t see the police -”

“Your student, Valerie, is handling everything. She sent me off to get the ladder and get you down.” Wong had a wry expression. Valerie was a force of nature when she was excited. Perhaps he should’ve sent something to the cops, or donated to a charity they liked? He could probably afford it.

“Thank you.” Strange flexed his hands and tried to not think of the itch between his shoulder blades. He trusted Wong. Or at least Wong was no more dangerous than anyone else here. “Shall I go first?”

“Probably for the best.” Wong’s shoulders were relaxed, and he sounded mostly like he was going along with whatever Strange said because questioning it would probably be more confusing than the plain truth. Or the plain untruth, as the case may be. “The PTB didn’t warn me this time.”

They checked in with the police, and Wong awkwardly checked out Strange’s arms (the cuts from the glass were almost invisible now) while Strange wrote down a quick statement.

It didn’t take that long for them to gather up the students, cancel class, and convince Valerie that there were no demons involved in what happened that night. Wong sat on the desk and watched Strange pack up his bags. “I teach a class on Monday nights,” Strange explained. “Kind of a preventative medicine, I suppose. Teaching about history, safe uses of magic, and mythology. I think officially my class is folklore and folk traditions. A lecture.”

“Free,” Wong murmured. “Generous, really.” Wong was a mess of sharp joints and square lines, and it looked like whatever sleep he had still wasn’t enough.

“Not entirely?” Strange’s tiredness wasn’t an excuse for the defensive burn he felt. After all, it seemed like the magical world of things either thought his shaky finances were a tool to be used, or impossible since he was the Sorcerer Supreme. His old paychecks from being a surgeon had vanished in the vain hopes he could cure the nerve damage in his hands. That same damage left him without the ability to do surgery and he had no desire to teach surgery. Eventually, he ended up in Tibet. 

Now, nerve damage research was rapidly advancing, but really, he had so many other things to work on that anyone else in the world deserved the first chance at things. The Ancient One in Tibet was his last chance to fix his hands, and instead he ended up having that door close and another dozen open. 

“Considering the magical incident rate out here, it’s also increasing the amount of belief in - safer magical practices, and possibly cutting down on someone trying to - oh - deliberately summon banana slugs,” Strange said finally.

“I dread to imagine the tactics or the goals involved in that plan.” Wong followed Strange out into the hall. There was police tape on a few of the doors, but it was quiet now as they headed out of the building. “So this is back on that debt thing you mentioned? You’re getting them to owe you, to make you stronger?”

“Not really. They may owe me for this, but I owe them as well, so it’s back to trading pennies instead of any true debt.” He’d used that metaphor before. Kids counted pennies and could trade them, and shaking down a couch could pay for a candy bar (though less than you could get back when he was a kid.) Adults usually didn’t care about pennies.

“You use the word ‘debt’ like some people use the word ‘weapon.’” Wong looked thoughtful as they got outside. “I don’t suppose . . . .” He trailed off, and looked both curious and exhausted.

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner.”

“So how dangerous is it out here? Do you have a bunch of wizards that you asked to help with Garry’s Glen, and that book you were talking about?” Wong tucked his badge in his inner coat pocket; they probably looked like any kind of normal civilians heading down the road after that. “Is the right term wizard kings?”

“Is that what the PTB use?” Strange’s hands felt gritty (the rowing team ladies loved making the sand mandalas) and he still smelled that damp vegetal funk from the portal. It was a wet jungle like dimension that looked to be mostly mushrooms and creeping vines over basalt columns. At first, he thought they were teeth, and the vines were hair, until the slugs started pouring out. “I guess the term would be sorcerers. Or wizards. Warlocks? The official term for myself is the Sorcerer Supreme, but that’s more because of who accepts me, and my role in relation to this dimension.”

“Who accepts you -” Wong rubbed his thumb over his scarred knuckles. “Patrons. They were saying you had three spirits, kind of like them, who feared that you would not fight for them.”

Strange snorted quietly under his breath. “The Vishanti. I did fight for them. We arranged it that I’d return the second I left, so this dimension was never without my protection.” He was quiet as they passed the bakery. A few people sat on the porch drinking coffee while kids ran up and down the sidewalk with glow-sticks.

“How long?”

“I asked them to let me forget.” Strange took a few tries to get the door unlocked, and decided that was why his eyes were burning and he felt awkward as he got them into his shop. “I think it was more than a thousand years.”

That got him a long look like Wong was both believing him and not wanting to believe him. Strange tried to meet his eyes. Then Wong turned sharply and headed toward the kitchen. He found the kettle and said, “They didn’t mention that to me.”

“Your crew don’t seem to think a lot of me. I really doubt they had a clue what was going on with that war.” Strange set down his bag and headed to wash his hands off. “I’m surprised they didn't say I was easy to bribe, or a - I don’t remember the term. Terrible bedside manner, amazing skills, really fond of the number on the check more than the patient. Jerk, I guess.”

Wong chuckled. “I really don’t think that’s too uncommon with young doctors. You spend a few years swearing you’re the best with crippling debt, and suddenly you can make the cash back and be the best. You’ve been pretty patient with me acting like Alice and your world is Wonderland.”

“Three impossible things before breakfast?” Strange grinned at him. “We keep meeting at night here. We'd probably need to change that saying.”

“I think the cockatrice you were talking about is my impossible things for quite a long time,” Wong said with a smile, “And meeting up at night - well, then I was a night shift nurse before I found you hanging off the building trying to tie ribbon around a kid’s neck.”

“It’s supposed to -”

“Stop Acheri, I know. I looked it up. Looked up about Bai Ze as well. You tried to explain it to me, back then, but I wasn’t listening.” Wong leaned on the counter. “Shall I cook? You cooked last time, and you look tired.”

“I’m honestly tempted to run through the shower. I smell like the co-op’s compost pile.”

“Worse,” Wong said. He was smiling though. “Give me a warning when you’re close to done, and I’ll have dinner.”

Strange trusted the food that was on the table. Wong kept trying to convince him it was safe anyhow.


	5. Chapter 5

“In Finnish lore, there are powers and beings called väki; they’re inherent to all things. Opposing powers can help cure illness caused by one. For example, a hot sauna filled with the väki of fire, tulen väki, will cure an illness caused by nearly drowning (in the veden väki.) When a väki is treated as a being, it can be called a haltija.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Wong was slowly starting to admit to himself that he couldn’t kill Strange if they met while facing any kind of supernatural problem. Admittedly, he found that true when he met Strange at the coffee shop, and helped a small cat down from the roof. That scenario was more that a fight with a wizard king could not happen while pre-school kids were cheering on a kitten rescue.

They did dinner again after the first time Strange saw Wong’s fighting skills. Strange acted like he didn’t really expect to be punching scarecrows in an All Hallows’ Eve decorated cemetery, but - well - Wong didn’t expect a lot of things that came with his line of work.

“So - you never answered the question.” Wong was perched on the porch swing with a beer. “How many other . . . .” He gestured at Strange and made a sort of magic-ish flourish with one hand.

“None, really. None officially working with me. I didn’t want to send a call out with all the details, because you’d run the risk of making something minor a lot more dangerous. Especially since I’m not sure what’s causing the magical disturbances here.” Strange looked like he was way too relaxed. Admittedly, they'd been on the run ever since activity started in the cemetery.

“It’s not all that book, if that book’s even here?” That was one disadvantage to living in the monastery. He’d gotten used to having everything magical in the area heading to the monastery or in the monastery.

“Exactly. It’s a bit like - magic requires the knowledge and the ceremony. People here seem to manage the ceremony without the magical potential, or an understanding.” Strange gestured again. “Think of it a bit like an area with an explosion risk, and you don’t know about it. Without knowing why it’s a risk of explosions, I can only try to prevent them from happening, or reduce the damage.”

“And if you went to - oh - let’s say New York, and yelled that it’s natural gas, natural gas might - exist? Because of the belief factor.” Wong leaned to set his beer bottle down and sprawled out on the porch swing. He can't really imagine fighting the PTB by yelling they didn't exist. Then again, Strange didn't make the Acheri not exist.

“Not quite that powerful, but it would be far easier for a wizard to summon the natural gas analogue, and far harder for me to banish it.” That was one reason why areas with supposed bad vibes were so dangerous. Strange straightened his back and took a deep breath to explain.

Wong had heard this one before. The action versus inaction question when it came to magic. Technically, the very fact that Strange was here could cause problems for the town, but fearing those kinds of things was one of the worst things you could do as a Sorcerer Supreme. You could make your own metaphorical tower and pull information around you and wait for trouble to come to you. In the end though, openly doing that kind of thing twisted the structure of people’s lives. You had people who owed you, settling in, paying off their debts and earning new ones. The access to you became a debt. The need to bring things to your home became a debt. Leaving left your home’s safety a debt and made new places seem all the less safe. The fact that your realm was not your home was a debt, in a way, since you had to learn the patterns of life to be safe, even when your job was to lay down your life for it.

Wong could be furious that his life was utterly turned upside down by his spirits ordering him to kill Strange, but there was an end condition. He doubted that you stopped being a Sorcerer Supreme lightly.

“So why are you telling me about it? Is it because I’ve got no inherent magic?” Wong looked over at him and reached over to nudge Strange’s hand. The scrape from earlier looked pretty bad and slightly puffy, but Strange swore that it’d be fine. Wong didn’t like how Strange visibly had to hold back the tremor under Wong’s attention. The scars from the shop window had completely faded.

“No. It’s because I’d sooner tell you the truth, because you might see or hear about something that would help us both keep this town safe.” Strange sounded like this was perfectly logical. He made a lot of things sound logical. Somehow, the spirits explaining all the ways that Strange was terrible did not have that same kind of certainty.

“I’d recognize the pattern of the magic.” Wong let go of Strange’s hand. “You’ve got no clue how down to earth you sound. Just - looking like you stepped out of a war zone, and telling me there’s a kalman väki in the -”

“Well, there’s always magic about graveyards. That was a case where the guardian spirit - the haltija - was agitated, and I needed help to keep people away long enough.” Strange looked like he was worn thin. They were probably do for some more dinner (the beer and pizza wasn't bad at all, but Wong missed lunch,) and Wong knew he saw some boxes that needed to get unpacked for the shop.

Wong flashed a grin at him as he sat up. He looked better, really, for working with Strange. He was eating more regularly, and the PTB mostly just contacted him with warnings as long as he was careful. “And I can say I’ve punched scarecrows and won. Can’t argue with that.”

He’d gotten some photos of the decorations for his aunt as well. She’d probably love them and stop asking if she needed to take the bus up to make sure he was eating well.

Strange leaned to pick up Wong’s bottle. “I’ll wash these out.”

Wong followed him back toward the kitchen. “Thanks for - I guess the invitation in. And trusting me.”

“How have they been? Your PTB okay with how you’re handling this?” Strange was leaning on the counter, and the beer apparently was enough that he was forgetting to try to hide the hand tremor. Or maybe he trusted Wong.

Wong snorted. “They’ll have to be.” He picked up his jacket. “They haven’t said I have to move, but they’re thinking I’m not near enough to what you’re doing.”

Strange frowned. “All right. I can give you a call next time I find something. If I’ve got advanced warning.”

Wong stood for a while watching the moths spiral up and down under the street light. He could’ve gone back in and offered to help Strange with stuff in the shop. He could have asked more questions and listened to Strange’s plans.

Instead, he was rubbing a hand over the scars on his left knuckles.

It was cold, and he was tired. Strange's shop was lit up, and it looked like Strange was working on unpacking something. He didn't look back too much as he headed home. He sent his photos to his aunt, a recipe he promised for the deputy and Valerie, and a postcard to the Acheri in Farrisville. He could pretend he was protecting the world from trouble when he was helping out Strange. That'd still be following the orders, in a way. That was an order he'd actually want to follow.


	6. Chapter 6

“One story in the north has the grim advice, ‘Cattle die, brothers die, you too will die, but I know one thing that never dies. It is the judgement of a dead man’s life.’ Declare a creature evil only when you’ve known his habits and his haunts, and only when you too are willing to have the same lot cast for yourself.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

The bonus was for taking in a spotty teen covering debts with stealing kid’s bikes. Wong made up for the bad taste of that by donating some cash toward a scholarship fund, and actually headed out of the station to have his lunch. It was drizzling when he got back in.

Mostly the magical incidents that “Stephen” dealt with seemed to be written up as crabby teens, a bad trip, or someone new in town. The general attitude was that magic was only written down as the cause if it was undeniably the reason for the unrest. The night shift had it worse. Last month, it was phones ringing (just once) every hour and a half. Strange said it was another demon which used the phone lines to travel.

Strange also explained his ethical concerns with the term demons, the history, and the most common factors with them. It was, in a way, a lot like Wong’s childhood. Strange looked and likely was a lot younger than Wong’s father, but they both seemed to enjoy just trying to lay out why and how something was happening, instead of demanding you run along with it.

Wong’s father was a teacher, and Wong wondered sometimes if Strange had wanted to teach medicine before the accident that ruined his ability to do surgery. Strange frequently implied the guy he was back in the late 50’s wasn’t that great of a person. He said he could count the people that he helped out of the kindness of his heart on one hand.

It'd gotten to the point where they'd sit on Strange's porch and talk about everything from whatever they just dealt with to theories about portal mechanics. Wong had a strange tension running down his spine. It would be far too easy to just relax or even doze off. Strange seemed to start from the idea that you would agree if you knew what he was thinking, and that you’d tell him he was an idiot if he was wrong. So give him a beer and some time, and Wong would learn about just about every magical discipline under the sun. Or suns. Probably, Strange never had a chance to really talk about magic with someone else. All Wong had to do was imply that refusing the PTB was like refusing to go to Ninevah.

It hadn’t been that bad. He only had a bus, a train, and his car break down when he refused to move the first time. On the other hand, Strange expected that his PTB would force him to act the way they wanted to. It wasn’t like his hands were tied. In fact, the longer he knew Strange, the more options he seemed to have. 

Strange had a hand tremor, and regularly seemed to choose to fight evil with less magic rather than more. The Ancient One, admittedly, probably was similar, but Wong mostly only saw what happened when magic needed to be cast or issues with the students. The Ancient One and his father discussed magic, but it wasn't the same rambling leaps that Strange used when he discussed magic. Strange’s magic primarily needed his voice or his hands. Those same hands ranged from a mild tremor to a terrifying amount of clumsiness, from Wong’s point of view.

Strange said it was an old car wreck (and Wong himself had his own old aches.) But Strange wasn’t rich (Greenwich house or no), he pretended his hands were fine, and he dressed sharply and acted like running a tiny shop was effortless. If Wong hadn’t stayed around, pretending that the PTB wanted him to watch Strange at work, he would’ve thought that Strange was just some rich eccentric man with everything a wizard would ever want in his life.

Until Wong ended up patching him up, and finding that Strange hadn’t slept and Strange always asked how Wong was sleeping. Strange would invite him in, cook something as complex as his pain could allow, and teach him about what happened. Which, inevitably, rolled around to “how do you keep yourself safe if it happens again.” Wong suspected, in a way, that this was how Strange kept looking the impossible in the eye and deciding it was time for a fight. Strange was good at surviving on “good enough,” but not that good at realizing when his “good” was neither good nor enough.

The PTB said his teacher, the Ancient One, had trained two black magicians - the most vile of the vile - and another game hunter who’d gone mad. The Vishanti (he remembered them vaguely, but his dad, Hamir, never talked that much about spirits) were the patrons of the Sorcerer Supreme. They chose Strange. Strange dabbled in darker arts, and regretted it. Strange was constantly mobile. Horrifyingly well read. Ridiculously powerful.

If Strange wasn’t a rose scented guy wearing a shirt from the Co-op and struggling with opening cans late at night while talking about Chinese river serpents, he could’ve been terrifying. He had literally increased the number of magical items and spells that Wong had seen in his lifetime by tenfold or more. He was a Sorcerer Supreme.

The PTB called on Wong, and it left him feeling drained and rattled. The last time that Strange asked for help, he wanted some Finnish lessons on tape. Strange sounded rattled and tired as he explained that there was an offended graveyard spirit and Strange needed to be able to communicate with it. Strange always thanked him for his help. Sometimes he wondered, when Strange would pull out some book from the 1500’s, what kind of debts were represented by it or indeed the rest of Strange’s little library in the back of the shop.

The most magic Wong saw Strange use, outside of fighting someone, was the occasional letter that he'd send through an odd portal, and the occasional reply that'd drop heavily on the shelf. It wasn't the kind of dangerous magic that the PTB talked about, at all.

As long as Wong and Strange were fighting to make the world a safer place, he couldn’t see any reason to kill Strange.

Either way, he had a good lunch, and he had a message. Strange had called, and told him that he heard of something that might be of interest. Seemed to be timed to be shortly after the shop opened up.

Time to follow some leads and then return that call.


	7. Chapter 7

“We are on a mission.We are called to educate the earth.”

Novalis 1798

The third time Strange got the windows to his shop painted it was repayment from his students at the community college. Valerie was one of his students with a lecture program on the safe use of magic. She added snowflakes for winter, some rather lovely yellow flowers for Beltane, and never once complained about the times she had to nail up boards.

Valerie was one of those people who thought that a bag of salt and calling something a demon had her ready for everything. That unfortunately wasn't true, but she was enthusiastic and always willing to help. She wasn't that magically powerful, but with some education, she could've probably protected everything she cared about for the rest of her life.

Every morning, Strange looked at his windows, dusted the shop, took a good long walk around town before getting a coffee at the Nut Butter Bar cafe. There’d been a crop of sinkholes and a minor infestation of Russian owls in the park. After the late night phone call demon, and things like that, it had been quiet. The latest worry, and why he was warming up his feet on the heating vent under his counter, was a portal to another dimension under the fountain. It had a sea of damp leaves and coins, and seemed to work on a slightly different time scale compared to the more conventional space, but so far, all that happened was that he soaked his boots.

He was quite certain that portal wasn't there yesterday.

Strange left a call for Wong and fished out some of his books. It could’ve been a secluded ceremonial place or something like that, with a natural spring nearby. Springs attracted attention, in both the simple “a bear is outside your house because he is thirsty” and in the “now you have a pegaeae who would like you to be polite.” Naiads were always interesting to talk to.

He hadn’t found any signs that Garry’s Glen was always magically explosive. Of course, it was hard to say how you’d research that. After all, the mystical side of things found the world always active, and “quiet” places were more places that were too busy to notice or too balanced to tip things into disarray. Since he moved out to Garry’s Glen, the papers hadn’t been any more active with stories about strange goings-on which meant it was only six ufo sightings, a haunted steeple, and a blighted circle in a field in the less skeptical papers. The circle was due to mundane natural causes (dogs,) not magic.

The mess with the oarfish in the river was a magical creature, much like the passenger pigeon, but it wasn’t that bad to handle. Wong had looked relieved to find out it was only a magically summoned ocean fish instead of a Chinese river serpent like they’d originally feared. They even managed to get it back into the ocean with minimal mess.

Showing Wong how teleportation portals worked was more than worth the debt. They stood there for a while with the smell of the sea around them, and Wong stared up at the sky. Then Wong stretched his back, offered to make dinner, and helped Strange to his feet.

Wong called him back around lunch time. It was pretty quiet in the background of the phone call. Lately, Wong mostly seemed to be using payphones near the freeway, or a cafe in Farrisville near the railroad. One time, he'd passed the phone over to the Acheri, and she told Strange about high school. Someone wanted her to do some modelling work, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to say yes or no. “It’s good to talk with you. Are you still at work?”

“Officially. I’ve got a half hour while they’re pulling up some paperwork for me.” Wong paused, and Strange could hear the creaking of a chair, and a sigh. “I’m at the library.”

Wong didn’t talk much about his work. All Strange knew was that he was some kind of detective, and mostly he worked from his car. He had a desk in the station somewhere, and that was about all that Strange had gotten from him for info. Strange weighed his options on the security of phone lines. “I took a walk this morning, and found something odd. Would you like to take a look at it this evening? We’d have to go out fairly late, so I should offer dinner.”

“I should probably cook this time. If I brought something, would that be all right?” Wong paused for a while before adding, "I wasn't warned about anything new." The PTB occasionally would tell Wong about things they were worried about, mostly in the context of Strange not somehow clearing up the problem. Strange got the feeling that Wong found it irritating, but he couldn't tell if it was how the spirits discussed their worries or if Wong thought it was insulting to Strange.

“That sounds good.” Strange leaned to flip through the calendar. “There’s a night run starting a five, but it should be done before dark. Do you think you can get here before it starts?”

“The crowds? Good point.” Wong made a noise. “I’ll try. If I’m late, don’t worry.”


	8. Chapter 8

“To name and define the unknown is a power in itself. If you know that your constant companion is a Qareen, then you know its habits and its goals. Socrates spoke of his constant companion as a Daimonion. He said it existed to stop him from making unwise choices, and thus destroyed his chances as a politician.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Wong wasn’t late enough to feel like he needed more than three apologies, but Strange still didn’t seem to relax until he knew Wong was all right. At least he did have the groceries for dinner, and neither paperwork or dust from his latest case on him. It was a nasty affair with a nursing home, the MVD, and it was getting to the point that he could shove it off on someone else’s desk and arrest the people he knew were involved.

Wong made lasagna. The race was over by the time it was out of the oven, and the town’s band was playing in the park. “So you said we’d need to meet after dark?”

“Pretty late. We’d need to check out the fountain.” Strange was washing dishes. “I found a portal there. I’m not sure we can check it out until after the band’s done. At least not without using more magic than I think is safe to keep people from noticing us.”

Strange usually wanted to talk about the latest supernatural thing they’d stopped, or about Wong’s spirits, but Wong really wasn’t up for that. Wong had a feeling that Strange didn’t necessarily see him as a student or a partner. There were times that it felt "freindly" enough that Wong worried if someone who scowled and called him a wizard king was better than nothing. He was trying to not do that lately. They both looked better for being a team, to be honest, for the amount he was spending time around Strange. Strange was sleeping more regularly, and that reminded Wong to do the same.

Wong picked up a dish towel and started drying plates. “I’ve got nothing planned and the casework lately’s been pretty grim. Not your fault. Just the usual human nature. So you called me because you thought they’d be happier knowing the stuff you’re up to?”

“Exactly.” Strange’s main concession to his trembling hands was a rubber mat at the bottom of the sink. It was a cheerful affair with a tipsy octopus holding a martini glass. Wong hadn’t made any comments about it, and Strange seemed kind of comforted by that.

“Well, I don’t really know anything about dimensional portals.” Wong looked out the window at the crowds. It didn't seem that likely that they could go to the fountain without being seen.

“I believe the scientific explanation is that there’s a thousand other dimensions constantly unfolding from every instant of time. The butterfly making a hurricane theory.” Two plates, some mugs, and the detritus from dinner wasn’t a ton of work. Strange drained the sink and leaned against the counter. “The fact that one’s here could be a half dozen reasons. It could be a natural weakness between dimensions, due to the nature of Garry’s Glen.”

“And a non-natural option might be something like a - wizard’s hideout?” Wong guessed. He dried his hands off and headed to pick up Strange’s coat. Tonight was not a night he wanted to be thinking about little old grandma’s sedans, or shady nurses, or anything else.

“Sanctum sanctorum, technically, would be the term,” Strange said and put it on automatically. It was a testament to his trust that it took another minute for him to look at Wong in bafflement. “Maybe. Why is -”

“I haven’t had a concert or a night off in years.” Wong looked at him with a very straight face before finally offering a smile. “Work has been rough.”

Strange looked out the window, back at his shop, and then picked up Wong’s coat to hand to him. “Let’s go then. On the scale of wizards out here, it looked pretty - natural, and abandoned, which doesn’t mean much. I haven’t heard of anyone that famous living out here.”

Wong wondered, sometimes, what wizardly news networks were like. Maybe that was why Strange wrote letters occasionally. Wong stepped outside with him and they headed up the street. “Any other causes for magical instability?”

“Thousands. To be honest, if you asked someone like me, they’d say it could be events, just the natural state, someone accidentally causing problems. If anything, it seems calmer here right now, but that’s just because I’m here.”

Wong frowned and tucked his hands in his pockets as they walked past some communal picnics near the co-op. “But it’s not natural?”

“I don’t know what the regular state out here is.” Strange’s face was a mess of angular cheekbones in the low light. Strange once called it the problem of wizard equivocation. In other words, you'd talk to a wizard and get a half dozen answers to avoid saying that something was definitely one thing. “I mean, the average level of problems is pretty bad, but they’re not coming to a crescendo as best I can tell.”

“Can you just enchant the area to be safer?” Wong didn’t particularly like that idea, but if it worked, it might help.

“I could. I’d need to know what’s the worst problems, though, and to research how, who, what, and where for the spells. The debt to set something up wouldn’t probably matter a lot to someone like me, but a more average wizard would likely find it significant.” Strange picked a bench around one of the big trees in the park and sat down. “Spells or wards would last - probably ten years, if things went wrong.”

“So who died?”

Strange sharply inhaled, but Wong couldn’t see his expression. Wong could feel the scars on his knuckles under his fingers. “What?” Strange asked finally.

“In the eighties, I guess, at the earliest? Who died in this area?”

“Because that’d be . . . .” Strange trailed off. “Oh.” Wong could picture it, actually. Some wizard, possibly a local, quietly doing her thing and protecting the town. There was magic inherent to routine, after all. There was a reason why diners tended to be the safest place in bad weather. Years of people having their morning coffee and the Sunday roast beef hash had a power of its own. “That was when the Infinity Gauntlet - occupied everyone. I’m not sure how much you -”

“I think the PTB mentioned it. They thought you didn’t do enough.” Wong hadn’t heard Strange talk about it much. Strange would talk about just about anything else magical, if you gave him half a chance. As soon as you mentioned “half the sentient life in the universe dead,” you got into the stuff of nightmares.

“Doesn’t surprise me. I suspect they think that about a lot of what I do.” Strange’s voice sounded kind of strained. He mentioned, once, to Wong that there had been a time when half the sentient life was dead, and Strange was not. Strange’s patrons gave him part of his ridiculous amounts of power, and all they asked in return was that he’d protect this realm. That had to be some kind of wake up call, though Wong wasn’t sure if it was Strange’s first one.

The PTB would totally say that Strange needed a wake up call in the sense of dying, since he was endangering the world.

“Oh no. There’s things they think you do too much.” Wong tried to sound like he was joking. “Still I wonder if there was a wizard, out here, trying to keep this place safe, who left. Or passed on.”

“And when that passenger pigeon appeared, it was Garry’s Glen returning to a more . . . unsettled state.” Strange ran a hand through his hair. “You may be right, Wong. I never even considered that. And if it was thirty years ago, I definitely wouldn’t have noticed someone dying out in this area.”

“Probably should let people know a bit then. Know stuff’s been weird out here. So if something -” Wong was not going to talk about either of them dying.

“Not planning on having anything happen.” Of course, when it came to magic, you never really knew how it’d go. Strange got to his feet. “Dessert? I see a ice cream cart over there. We’re enjoying the concert, not working, right?”

Wong laughed and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “Right. Trying to relax, at least. I’ll have anything with chocolate, I think. I can pay you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Strange waved his hand. “Really. The owner owes me after I got a domovoy to calm down after she moved in.”

In the end, they never got to check out the portal for another week. They had ice cream, waited out the concert, got called over to a star gazing group to check out a comet, and then a sinkhole opened up in the co-op’s parking lot. It seemed mundane enough, and it even missed the pansy garden planted by the second grade kids.


	9. Chapter 9

“As a container is defined by the space it provides, a ratite is defined by the flight the bird lacks. The sterna lacks a keel, which means that even if the wings could fly, the bones would not support it. An ostrich, like a demon, suffers from a lack of observational permanence, according to Pliny the Elder. A demon interacts with the world via specific symbols or elements, and the rest does not exist. Supposedly, an ostrich can hide her head in the sand, and think the world cannot see her.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

They contacted Wong while he was precariously checking out a dilapidated elevator in the old theater in Farrisville. It was the usual talk. They mentioned that there was danger in the water, which’d been happening since April. They weren’t pleased with the amount of time he spent on detective work. They were pleased that he was working with Strange to find out what Strange’s schedule and work was like.

They still wanted him to kill Strange.

A few days later, Wong knelt with Strange in the rain. Strange was holding an umbrella (from the co-op,) and Wong was glad he was wearing his oldest pair of jeans and galoshes. “So how does the portal work?”

“Best I can tell, it’s a thinning of reality right here, but -” Strange leaned to open up the pamphlet he brought. “Try these gestures. I’ll watch. I want you to be able to open it if anything goes wrong.”

“I don’t have magic though, right?” Wong ran a finger over the instructions. “Or is this one of those - the barrier’s so thin you just need to know what’s right and believe you can do it?” Strange had told him that magic was both a combination of magical potential and ceremony. Before he got to know Strange, Wong didn't recognize magic as well as he did now.

“If I did everything right, yes,” Strange said and sat down on the edge of the fountain. He was wearing his usual button down shirt and slacks, and apologized for the bleach stains on one leg. Hand slipped during laundry, he said. The holes in his shirt cuff were from “work”, which wasn’t something Wong wanted to think about. “The other stuff on the agenda is to keep an eye out for any strange animals. That sinkhole came along with a low-intensity earthquake, and the passenger pigeon appeared after a similar earthquake.”

“But you don’t know if they’re interconnected. Could be our magician and the book of animals is just making something else wake up.” Wong tucked the instructions inside the inner coat pocket and rubbed his hands as dry as he could. Right. He’d seen magic back in Tibet, when he was a kid, but it was very different to be here and getting told to know how to do something in case if his wizard was incapacitated.

Strange nodded. He always looked like a devil’s advocate helped when he was doing magical work. “So were your PTB okay with the plan?”

“This? Yeah.” Wong was glad to see a sort of standing mirror sized oval space appearing and eating the rain that was hitting it. “They keep talking about the docks.”

Strange checked his watch, got up, and stepped through the portal. It seemed as thin as a piece of paper, and it looked kind of like one of those marbleized shimmering vellums that were for sale in the stationary shop.

Wong was not expecting to wetly step into about two inches of water and leaves on the other side. Strange had warned him to expect to get wet. “Strange?”

“Right here.” Strange said. “Are you all right?” The area was shaped like a natural grotto, and Strange was standing on drier ground and half hidden by a curve of the rock. “We’ll need to check the bank’s clock to see if my watch slowed down while we were in here.”

“That time dilation effect you mentioned.” Wong waded out of the leaves and danced his flashlight over the walls. “I thought it’d be more noisy in here, with the echoes.”

“It is very muffled, isn’t it?” Strange touched a wall carefully. “I think there’s more to this place, than just this, but it’d take time to see if that’s just a hunch. We need to make sure time flows normally in here first.”

“Right.” Wong looked over his shoulder where the portal had been. It looked like a cave, but his nerves were telling him that it sounded as much like a real cave as a matte painting did in a movie. “Has it been a minute?”

“Yeah,” Strange walked back to him and asked, “Shall I open it this time?”

Wong nodded. “I think I could do this, if we needed to. It feels odd to you too? Or is this more being careful with portals?”

“Dimensional travel is - strange. I’d sooner be cautious than find out we spent two hours in here.” Strange reopened the portal. “We could check it out another time. See if there’s a hidden door. If there was a mage in town, this might’ve been a nice place to hide a library or some kind of meditation room.”

“Awfully damp,” Wong pointed out as he walked back through the portal. “Though I guess maybe this predates the fountain?”

Strange startled a little and leaned to read the plaque. “Nineteen eighty one. You . . . you may be right.” By the bank’s clock, no time had passed. 

After a few more trips, they narrowed it down to the dimensional pocket being about 75% slower than normal. Strange had no luck at finding any kind of obvious signs of a magical sanctuary within the little side dimension, and they called it off at about midnight.

Wong didn’t picture killing Strange the entire time. He wasn’t sure what to think about that. The spirits never said he needed to do some kind of ceremony to kill him, but they definitely had magic around him with his orders. Now that he could see it, did that mean he could stop them?

They ended up having coffee and splitting a massive puffy pancake at the cafe a day later. Strange called him up to say that he had some coupons, and invited him over to talk. To make the PTB happy, he said, and to catch up. It didn’t really fit his image of a rich and mysterious wizard to picture a guy commiserating about the cheap veggies for the week from the co-op and clipping coupons.

“So, how do funerals work with your people?” Wong asked watching someone discuss recipes for radishes outside.

Strange made an inquisitive noise and leaned to take a long drink of coffee. “Wizards, you mean? It varies. We’re not a monolithic group, after all. Think of it like people who can carry jackhammers.”

Wong could feel himself making a face at that mental image. “I’m not sure - you’re just making me picture Circe doing construction work.”

“It’s not a bad metaphor, in a way,” Strange propped his elbow on the table while he talked, and his hand tremor wasn’t as bad at all this time. “So you’ve got Circe, the enchantress on her island, or Circe, who makes potions for you. The Circe who's not a hermit would get an obituary, but she’d also have a lot of social connections. Other people who she slighted or helped.”

Wong frowned. “Like yourself. If you died, I know who you were, and I’d remember you.”

“Exactly. Though you’ve got your spirits ordering you around.” Strange sighed under his breath. “That isn’t - you’re not the first person I’ve met trapped in that situation. And I’m phrasing it that way because I wish it didn’t work that way. People should be free to make their alliances and choices of their own free will, versus being influenced or pushed by beings who aren’t working by the same rules.”

“No one is entirely free,” Wong said, partly for the point of arguing about it. “If you’re going to make that strict of a definition of being free.”

“I’ve done work for spirits,” Strange replied, like Wong was saying that Strange thought he was weak. “But it’s not exactly the same for some person to get grabbed from their life, magically tied to a purpose, and then fed a story about why they should be happy about it.”

“I’m not . . . unhappy.” Wong wondered somewhere deep down what Strange would say if he was unhappy.

Strange smiled back at him, and the sheer amount of magic he could be using spread around him like the warmth from the cafe. “Good. So - why the question about funerals?”

“Our potential missing person,” Wong said slowly, trying to phrase it like it wasn’t definite. “If our Circe wasn’t this public figure . . . .”

“You’ve got people with magic who prefer to lie low,” Strange said. “But . . . the eighties would put you near the Infinity Gauntlet affair. And the death toll was . . . .”

Wong looked down at the scars on his hand. “I’m guessing it was bad enough that even the Circe who was famous could’ve vanished, because the network of people she touched were gone?”

Strange nodded, and looked out the window like his food was forgotten. “Exactly.”

Three days later, Strange called him up and said he’d be late for their nightly “checking out the fountain” exploration, due to a dodo sitting round and alive under his lilac bush.


	10. Chapter 10

“Do not tap on your boat, or walk to the edge of the dock. The Tizheruk will snatch you from the edge, and vanish with you beneath the waves. A Tizheruk has a head greater than two paces, with a flipper in the back, and a form similar to the swan necked or long necked seal. It strikes without warning.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Strange called, and his first words were, “Got any sunscreen?”

Wong looked up at the ceiling fan and leaned back in his chair. He was in the office that he shared with the intern, a graduate student doing an endless organization project with the back files at the station, and the server admin. At least the server admin insisted they upgrade the chairs. “Yeah. Also have a half-day vacation that the chief says I’m owed before the end of August.”

“I need to go fishing. Or pretend to do watercolors. Want to come along? Valerie packed a picnic lunch and it’ll be massive and probably amazing.” Strange didn't sound like this was something major, but it sounded like it probably involved something magical.

“She's amazing. Sometime, you need to tell me how she's doing as a student.” Wong rubbed his thumb over the scars on the back of his hand. When he was a young teen, one of the students of the Ancient One got out of control. Now, as an adult, he could probably guess that it was some kind of talking to extraplanar spirits that went messily and terribly wrong. Back then, he was a spotty teen, angry and mad that his dad had gotten tossed around in the fray, and split his knuckles with the other monks. He didn’t miss a day of sparring after that. His dad didn’t think martial arts as self defense instead of meditation was exactly a good idea, but he never tried to stop him.

"It's more preventative medicine versus a magical student, but wizards and students is an odd affair." Strange was still talking, “There’s been some weird events by the docks.”

“Three calls today,” Wong said suddenly as he remembered. “Bunch of parents of preschoolers saying they claimed something tried to grab them on the docks.” The deputy was delighted when the lunar cycle said it couldn’t be werewolves. So far, he still had no idea why that was a common question.

“Three? Huh. Valerie just knew about her neighbor. I just want to be sure something’s not in the water.” The duck pond was a glacial lake. It could easily have been deep enough for something huge to live comfortably in the dark coldness of the bottom.

“I see.” Wong weighed attempting to fish, and painting. “I’ll stop by the art store, I guess. I’ll bring a thermos of coffee as well.”

Strange sounded grateful enough that Wong was pretty sure that Strange dreaded trying to bait a hook. “Thanks. Half past five sound good? Kids were catching fireflies, as I remember, so we may want to wait till the sun’s down.”

“Sounds great.” Wong found himself actually looking forward to this, and wasn’t sure what to make of his coworkers’ comments about his good mood. It wasn’t like working as a detective was fun and games, but he didn’t really want to consider if his day to day life was happy or not. He gave a good tip to the lady at the coffee shop for filling up his thermos though, and left feeling like maybe she was having a better day too.

Strange was waiting for him in the shade of the big tree when he came down the street. He was wearing a striped linen shirt, and looked a lot less bothered by the heat than the last time that Wong saw him. He also smelled faintly of coconut. The sunscreen was probably not a bad idea. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” Wong offered him a hand up. “So where are we going to paint? Schooner Point?”

“That seems like a good plan. We’d get a good view of the water from there.” Strange fell in line with him. “So, I checked the seismic readings.”

“And? We’ve got a bloop out there?” Wong could see a small pack of schoolkids sketching daisies. Most of the town was out and about today.

“Not the right kind of audio recordings,” Strange said. “But there was another earthquake. A small one. Assuming one is tied to the other, the time frames seem about right.” It might explain the sinkhole, if the earthquakes were going on for a while.

“Hrm. And what do you think is in the water? Generic water critter?” Wong never really studied sea serpents back in Tibet. Most of the time it was just students summoning demons or the occasional issue like that.

“Yeah. No good descriptions, but they’re toddlers. On the other hand, I don’t want toddlers getting eaten by who-knows-what.” Strange sighed. “Assuming it’s not just a log in the water and some bad vibes that got them scared.”

In Wong’s experience, a “bad vibe” was a code word for everything from “The walls have ‘DIE’ painted on them” to “it smells odd” when it came to things in Strange’s universe. “So we just paint, see if we see anything odd, and -” Wong eyed the picnic basket. “See what Valerie packed?”

“Exactly.” Strange took out his water colors. “I got a book on Impressionist painting in ten easy lessons. What about you?”

“Ink.” Wong smiled as he set up his paper. Calligraphy for his aunt wasn't a bad idea. He'd probably run out of paper before the sun was gone. “I wouldn’t mind watching you work.”

As the sun set, Wong had put aside his work to watch Strange finish up lesson three. “The dappling on the water is odd.”

Strange looked up from his work to peer into the distance and then slowly set his paintbrush down. “Snag the binoculars, would you?”

The water was a sea of violet, magenta, and orange with the setting sun, and a fine mist was gathering near the far shore, but Wong still could swear he saw something huge and dark dip through the waves. The ducks on the shore took off suddenly with a mess of honking and flapping.

Strange took a deep breath. “There’s two.”


	11. Chapter 11

“It is sheer madness to claim that a Bakunawa and a Tizheruk are one and the same. Obviously, a sea serpent with the power of lightning and a sea serpent which swallowed six of the seven moons is not the same at all. You would never hear a Tizheruk ask ‘what chain is this?’ If you had a Tizheruk, in your waters, you would be quiet, and just the opposite to stop a Bakunawa from devouring the moon. To deny this is to completely ignore the makeup of the universe.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Things went fairly quickly after that. Strange arranged some children’s finger painting sessions in his shop to cut down on trips to the docks. The amount of reports of something on the docks slowed down, but any reports was too often for Wong’s taste.

They’d narrowed it down to some kind of sea serpent or cryptid-style fish-like dinosaur. Strange sent off for some books to try to talk to animals. It seemed like the danger from the sea serpents was more people getting scared. They hadn't found any evidence of actual injuries.

“It’s not exactly easy, without knowing what we’ve got out there,” Strange pointed out. They were in the fountain portal, using a laser level to do a proper graphing of the dimensions of the space.

Wong nodded and continued sketching. So far, they found some carvings in Romanian, so he was copying them and the locations. Strange said he could ask for some favors for a translation. “I guess it’s also - if they’re just animals, you can’t really talk to them?”

“Not exactly, no. If they’re magical and sentient, yes,” Strange nudged a word on the wall and sighed. “We’ve got ten more minutes before midnight.” Midnight was mostly a good time for Strange to get enough sleep before opening his shop, and Wong to get home and get to sleep as well.

Wong leaned to rub charcoal over the last bit of writing. “I suspect we’ll just find out that this is the equivalent of kilroy-was-here.”

“Maybe?” Strange frowned. “On the other hand, it could be that . . . the wall just moved.”

Wong staggered back and automatically tried to not drop the charcoal rubbings on the damp floor and be ready for -

Strange was already shining his flashlight into the new little area. He was making some absent minded magical gestures with one hand as he floated gently off the floor. “Ah - so that’s why it’s so damp. Probably predated the fountain.”

Wong folded up his work and peered inside as well. The room didn’t smell as damp, and Strange was floating like that was a normal way of checking out a bookshelf. There was a sort of ozone like smell to the air, a geometric rug next to the bookshelves, a worn secretary chair, and a sturdy oak desk. It looked a bit like someone stood up from their paperwork, set a book down on the chair, and then stepped out for a minute. “Is it safe?”

“Pretty much so. There’s some protective charms that I need to check out.” Strange smiled at him and landed carefully on the rug. “I suspect if I activate them, we’d no longer have water in the main room, but I don’t think it’s safe. I do want to move the books out of here. Maybe tomorrow? We’re running out of time.”

“Are you sure emptying out the library is -” Wong followed Strange back out of the portal in the fountain.

“It’s . . . your theory may be right. No one’s been in there for years. Maybe even a decade. The newspaper on the bottom shelf was from the late seventies.” Strange stretched his back and took a deep breath. “It’ll take me a week to do some calls to see if anyone recognizes the style of warding, and to make sure it’s safe to use. Probably be a good idea to catch up on your sleep.”

“And if I can’t, give you call before ten?” Wong smiled. “Could bring dinner.”

“You’re a horrible temptation,” Strange said. “It’s the third week of the kale marathon in the co-op basket.” It wasn't that Strange hated kale as much as he didn't always have the energy to find new ways to cook it.

Later, with a beer, Strange admitted that the style of warding might help identify who used the office originally. He did not recognize the style of magic in any wizard that he knew that lived.

It took two more beers to get Strange, haltingly, to discuss the Infinity Gauntlet affair.


	12. Chapter 12

“A children’s game has grown up in areas where there are stories of the Bakunawa. One child is the Bakunawa, and the others keep him out of the circle and away from the “moon” in the center. He asks, ‘What chain is this?’ The children with their arms linked together call out that it is an iron chain. When they are tired, the chain breaks and the children say it is made out of fibers from a local plant. The child which is the moon becomes the new Bakunawa.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Wong would swear that he was mostly staying with Strange to keep the PTB happy. He was following the letter of the law in the sense that he was keeping an eye on what Strange was doing, if not the spirit. He was pretty sure that the occasional dinner and impromptu lesson about types and forms of sea serpents wasn’t the letter of the law for “protecting the world from wizard kings.”

Killing Strange would not make Garry’s Glen more safe.

Lately the spirits were not happy about the lake, and they were occasionally saying that he shouldn't go to that talk at the library. He was going there either way. He was supposed to talk a bit about being a detective and safe relationship advice with teenagers. There was no good reason for it to be a dangerous talk, and if the talk did go dangerous, he'd sooner be there with teens rather than alone. He did talk to Valerie about the talk, and she volunteered to bring some paperwork from the shelter in town and Farrisville. She nudged him with her elbow and grinned at him. "I'll be backup," she said.

Looking over the problem at hand, the lake likely had two sea serpents. One of them seemed larger, and had a sleek snake-like form, and the other looked rather like a rotting log combined with a seal. Both seemed magical, were active around dawn and dusk, and preferred to swim near the edges of the lake. That didn’t, Strange insisted, mean they wanted to eat toddlers, even if they had scared them.

Strange explained that talking to animals was a problem. An animal, even one with human-like intelligence, would be like a demon in the sense that the animal’s goals, opinions, and morals were alien to standard human ones. Assuming you could even communicate, that wouldn’t necessarily let you know what the animal was, or even allow you to make peace.

It was possible that there'd been two sea serpents in the lake for years, and a third unknown force had awoken them.

While working on the wizard’s hideout under the fountain, Strange called in a Welsh wizard. She turned out to be a scarecrow-like physicist who immediately shook Wong’s hand and apologized for her eye tremor. A roof beam, she said, as if that would explain it.

She also had the dignity to not laugh uproariously at Strange’s attempts at Welsh when they got into a discussion of the irritated cemetery spirits in the area. Strange had a theory that the rapid road expansion and the poor upkeep on the cemeteries was leading to all the problems. She, from what Wong understood of the conversation, thought the demon problem indicated that someone was upsetting the local environment, and the irritated spirits was the natural side effect.

Strange took her for a walk around the lake at sunset, and Wong trailed behind, half-listening, and half-pretending to watch monks work on a sand mandala. “So,” Strange asked, “What do you think?”

She watched the water with her binoculars and frowned. “Nothing I’ve seen. Sea serpents, I agree, or something like it, but nothing I’m familiar with.” She tapped her fingers against the railing near the docks. “Old Norse, I’d say. Try that.”

Wong already had the books on tape on order before Strange returned.


	13. Chapter 13

“As he grew up, he wandered far and wide; viewed other lands, other seas, new atmospheres, new rocks, unknown plants, animals, men. . . . By and by, he came to find everywhere objects already known, but wonderfully mingled, united; and thus often extraordinary things came to shape in him. He soon became aware of combinations in all, of conjunctures, concurrences. Erelong, he no more saw anything alone.”

Novalis 1799

Living in an area for a while meant that you'd get more mail. The fact that Strange had inventory coming in to the store also added to that. Right now, he was carrying a little display of woodblock printed postcards. Wong's aunt had met the Acheri in Farrisville at a class in the community college, and they'd started doing designs. Wong mentioned, late one night, that he wasn't sure if his aunt existed prior to the spirits manipulating his life, but Strange didn't feel the pull of the spirits on her compared to the pull on Wong.

He was untangling the leather ties for some pendants that came in, and he should’ve felt the curious tension in the currents of the magic outside. Instead, he jumped when he heard the phone ring. “Wong?”

“Can you come down to the library?” Wong sounded out of breath and there was some muttered conversation in the background. “I think it’s a situation for you.”

“Are the cops -” Strange didn't mind showing magic to the police, but he'd prefer to make it not be their problem. It was also better to work with civilians who'd be less likely to try to run into danger.

“No. Group of teens. I came down to talk and things - went weird in your kind of way. We’re behind the library. I think it’s - something like that window smashing guy again.” Wong sounded like he was cupping a hand over the phone to talk to someone.

Strange was already grabbing his bag. “Are the kids okay?”

“Yeah.” There was a pause and the distant sound like something falling. Wong called out that someone needed to stay with the group. “Is the fountain out of the question?”

Strange absently lent the power to Wong without even worrying too much about it. “Do what you need to. I can call in some favors if the cops have questions about magic and talk to the parents.” Strange picked up his last bottle of rose water. If it was the same demon, at least he knew the ritual that worked last time. And if it wasn’t - well - it was better to be prepared.

The streets were disturbingly empty, save for two smashed windows, and a car alarm wailing somewhere in the distance.

Wong had six kids and Valerie crouching near a tree. It looked like a couple of windows on the library were smashed, but the kids looked okay. Valerie waved cheerfully at Strange. “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got the salt if we’ve got to use it.”

“You’re a wizard?” asked a teenager wearing a pretty cool motorcycle jacket.

Strange nodded. “I’m a wizard. Can you guys describe what you saw?”

“Big huge guy that smashed the front window on the library and ran up the street? Too fast, too. Miss Valerie guessed the docks, from what she could see.” The kid stared up at Strange like he was amazing. “You’re seriously a real wizard?”

“Real enough. I teach a class about magic at the college, and I can fly with this cape.” Strange offered a smile, and the kid looked at him like he could move mountains. “All right. I’m going to head over there and see what’s going on. If you think something’s not safe, Detective Wong here will show you a secret room we found. If you get separated, stay away from windows and be careful.”

"A secret room?" Valerie brightened. “A sanctum sanctorum?”

So she was reading the supplemental material in those classes. It was no surprise. Strange suspected she’d be a pretty amazing mage, even with the tiny amount of magical talent she had. “Not exactly. But it was an office, possibly for a wizard, and it will be safe. It'll be a little damp when you come in there.”

He waited till he was a block away before he flew. He still didn’t catch up with the demon until he got down to the boardwalk, and he heard the smashing of glass on one of the little boats tied up to the dock.

He’d just set down the dictionary and started to set up when he got clocked from behind. More than likely the same type of demon, and that same - furious frenzy. At least it wasn’t his front window of his shop, this time.

Though knowing his luck, the demon might have already been by there and gone by the time he caught up. He didn’t remember it being this fast.

It was halfway through the spell to fold the dimensions and send the demon back to its more normal run that Strange got dunked in the lake. Thankfully he could replace verbal components with gestures, but the sheer focus on him and not the usual patterns for this demon was worrying. Usually demons of this type would focus on the bits of the world that “existed” for them. Signs with an “e” was the last one’s focus. This one too broke glass, but he neither had an “e” on him or was glass. Which was - worrying. Like something angered it, and sent it after him -

The rotting log brushing against his leg wasn’t a log. He struggled out of the water with more speed than he had to use. The sea serpents - he’d forgotten that this lake wasn’t just a lake -

He could call on all the powers in the world, he would not die, and he was able to hold his own with a decent fighter in a couple hundred different schools. He still needed his hands or his voice to cast magic, and no amount of brute force could change the fact that he, eventually, would have to breathe. Dimly, he rather hoped Wong was all right. He’d trusted him with the power to open the secret room under the fountain. Not a debt, he said -

And then the sleek black head of that snake-like sea serpent gently pinned the demon to the dock. Frankly he didn't have time to try to figure out if he recognized the serpent. It was huge, magical, and old, and it was helping him.

Strange spluttered until he could breathe, and started apologizing for the amount of rose water he splashed all over once the demon was gone.

And then doing it again in Old Norse, since he was told it might actually be understandable.


	14. Chapter 14

“In the end days, the world serpent will stop holding his tail. He will rise from the ocean and poison the sky, and Thor will slay him. After nine steps, the serpent’s poison will leave him dead. A common motif in art is a depiction of Thor fishing up the world serpent using a ox head as bait. Thor’s foot goes through the boat as he struggles to bring the serpent up, and finally is face to face with the serpent. However, Hymir the giant loses his bravery, and the serpent sinks back into the waves until the end of days.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Wong found, after the panic of getting out of the library and away from the windows, that walking through the town was comparatively calm. They ran into the deputy near the coffee shop, and he got the kids safely out of sight. He ended up using the fountain hideaway for a couple of paramedics trying to help someone having a bad panic attack. It wasn't that long for him to get word that Strange went down to the docks, and he found Strange standing there, sopping wet and slightly decorated with rose water and duckweed, and talking on Old Norse to a snake with a head the size of a king sized bed.

Strange had wet leaves clinging to his leg, and what looked like a bad scrape on his temple, but he was standing. And coherent, if one counted talking in a language that Wong did not know to a magical creature as "coherency." It would've been easy to say the snake was a cryptid of some sort, or a communal hallucination, but Wong looked at it, and instantly knew it was magical. There was the same feel as the spirits, in a way, and at the same time, there wasn't the same orders there.

The snake looked like it was rubbery, and had scales the size of small dessert plates. It - looked like a movie prop (that just moved.) It was also not talking, but Wong had never seen magic listen to reasonable rules before. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't rules in magic. Strange once explained flying by magical means. Apparently his powers were limited by the limitations of science. As soon as science could duplicate a simplistic magic spell, the magic spell would no longer work. Microwaves, Strange said, made a lot of simple cooking spells awkward.

Wong never heard Strange complain about science replacing magic, however, and he suspected that the debt problem was a big part of that. The idea that you’d need to weigh if you owed someone to reheat a tv dinner or a cup of coffee did sound terrible.

Wong edged around a smashed bottle of rose water and a soaked book. His coat was kind of muddy, and he'd shoved his tie in his pockets about when they started having to run. “Hey.”

Strange didn’t turn around. “Hey. I think . . . I think she was right. I think he understands me.”

“I didn’t realize he was that big. What’s his name?” Wong wiped his hands off on his pockets and stared up at the snake. Martial arts seemed useless right now in comparison to the impossible - realness of the size of that snake. About four years ago, he'd seen the Acheri, and wanted her dead for the flu and for being dangerous. He also wanted Strange dead, at the time. Now, things didn't seem that simple.

“Midgardsormr, he said. That’s . . . not the answer I really wanted to hear. Apparently he finds it crowded with two sea serpents. He’s not interested in scaring kids.” Strange looked over at him. He looked shaken at the worst.

“Is that - so he’s a nice guy?” Wong walked closer and looked up at the snake. There was a sort of rubbery movie prop lack of reality if you ignored how the snake moved. Was this what it was like to be a superhero? He'd seen them in the news, and sometimes was willing to recognize in his mind that Dr. Strange was one of them. The combination of Old Norse and Midgardsormr sounded familiar in his head, but he couldn't quite place where he'd heard it. Right now, it sounded like it'd be better to make sure Strange was fine and that they didn't have to figure out how to fight gigantic sea serpents.

“I’m not sure that -” Strange held out his hand and the snake folded rather like a deflating rubber raft into a smaller snake, then draped itself over his fingertips. “I’m not sure that applies, but he’s interested in a terrarium without another snake in it.”

“You’re talking about taking him to a pet store?” Wong was pretty sure his voice just cracked in an embarrassing way. The snake coiled over Strange’s sleeve cuff and flicked a tongue at him.

“No. The shop.” Strange gestured faintly with his empty (and shaking more than normal) hand. “If it’ll cut down on stuff scaring small kids here. The other guy in the lake should go back to sleep now that there’s just one of them in there.”

Wong headed to give Strange a supporting arm. “Let’s get back. You look like you’re half in shock.”

“I got tackled,” Strange said. He leaned though. “Thank you.”

"Does this happen a lot? Like what happened with the Acheri?"

Strange sounded like he couldn't quite follow the train of Wong's thoughts. "The Acheri? Which one do you - the one back in Farrisville? She sounds like she's doing well. The idea with the Bai Ze was more - I wasn't even sure it'd work. She was willing to try it though." Wong had honestly not considered that the idea of "stop a plague spirit by making her not have a plague" was just Strange scrambling for anything to try to help the situation.

"I'm glad you did. My aunt's happy, and she seems to be as well." Wong did not even consider killing him. "Come on. I think a blanket and something warm to drink is on the list for shock situations. Some poor guy was having a panic attack and we borrowed the fountain room for a bit for the quiet. No other major injuries, at least."


	15. Chapter 15

“Someone arrived there - who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. But what did he see?”

Novalis 1799

The office under the fountain wasn’t empty. Strange found a good amount of small spells around the place. Charms was the simplest explanation. Safety, protection, etc. Wong was constantly cautious of anything that felt like magic. Apparently he'd spent a lot of his time in Tibet seeing magic from a distance versus learning about it, so he couldn't tell a safe charm from a dangerous one. That probably explained why Strange barely remembered Hamir, and didn't remember his son at all.

There was the problem of the stuff in the office. Strange contacted his resources, and as best he could tell, whoever lived and worked there no longer existed. So there was the problem of dampness and an office full of mundane and magical goods that belonged to someone who passed on, and was now forgotten. He'd guess a guy, possibly one who used a pipe, and possibly someone who was interested in the occult or the paranormal prior to getting active in magic.

There were a few signs he had some awareness of vampires. That could mean he'd run into some kind of trouble, versus just being one of the dead from the Infinity Gauntlet affair. Mostly that just meant that Strange left the anti-vampire charms alone to try to be respectful.

The books were first. Wong and Strange spent a rainy afternoon flipping through books and sorting through them. They ended up with a pile of mundane ones, ones with potentially magical notes, and the ones that were obviously magical. Magical ones got sorted according to danger, and the store gained a small bookshelf of harmless books. A copy of _History of Animals_ ended up on Strange’s back library for a few months until another wizard needed it. Other ones went to libraries of friends. There was a slim booklet that Wong recognized from Tibet, and they both decided that Garry's Glen did not need a manual on the dangers of alchemy with spirits.

Strange said he had no way of knowing if the _History of Animals_ was the one that caused the magical animal appearances, or if it was just Garry’s Glen being Garry’s Glen. Strange read it, one night, with Wong making absent minded comments about Aristotle's xenophobia, and it seemed like a typical copy. Wong showed Strange his calendar with neat markings for each day they didn’t have a out of place animal appearing. Strange found himself watching the marks for when the PTB called on Wong instead.

He wanted to do something, and he didn’t know what he could do. Wong seemed frustrated with the PTB, and worried what'd happen if they decided he wasn't helping out. He trusted Strange, but Strange had no idea how to touch their delicate balance of trust and friendship. The office, at least, was comparatively simple. A box of mundane books got brought to the lending library, and they stopped by the pet store to buy another sunning lamp for the Midgardsormr and a ceramic rotten log for him to hide in.

They picked up a little cup of duckweed to add to the tank, and the Midgardsormr rolled around in the water like it was boiling in excitement. The snake wasn't bad company. He slept a lot, and most of his concerns were about things crowding their personal space.

With the shelves empty, the desk was several nights worth of work. Drawers had tobacco, papers, notes, pens, ink - all the detritus of someone who lived and worked there. Dry cleaning tags from the late 70’s. A ticket to an early concert.

Wong didn’t need to help out, but he did.

Strange always thanked him. He didn’t mind Wong having this kind of debt, to be honest. The man was trustworthy, and there was a chance that the spirits would have no hold on Wong if he gave Wong enough power to back up Wong’s strong will.

It was honestly thanks to working with Wong that he started contacting some of his other friends again. Thor approved of Wong, and it wasn't that hard to get a letter back to Hamir once he found someone who was heading out to that area.

Wong decided that he'd pay off his thanks for that by repainting the outside of the store. Donating things from the office was actually something that had to do with debt again. The idea that profit from another’s magic - be it knowledge, or things gained from magic, or monetary gain - was still a chance to claim a debt, and therefore it was better to keep things on an even keel.

Later, with the dinner dishes clean, Wong rubbed his hand over the scars on his knuckles and asked if debts made living with a wizard hard. Strange had laughed before looking serious. He said something about how it was usually a student and a teacher situation, versus equals. He didn’t want to think too much about it, to be honest.

He did think about the fact that Wong grinned and said, “I wondered why I wasn’t a student. I’m learning magic, you know. I can recognize the PTB before they call me to talk. It’s usually in Farrisville, you know. Not here.”

Maybe that was a gift, from that long gone wizard, as well.

Strange gave Wong the right to call a debt in, and taught him the ceremony of magic, and waited. Maybe someday, those spirits would ask too much, and Wong would be free.


	16. Chapter 16

“The world serpent is an example of an ouroboros. In some Egyptian texts, Ra travels to unite with Osiris in the underworld. A massive unified Ra-Osiris is shown with two serpents biting their tails above his head and at his feet. They are manifestations of Mehen who protected Ra on his journey. They represent the beginning and end of time.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

The first time Wong heard Midgardsormr, they were setting up the little fireplace to burn some documents from the fountain hideaway.

It was a bit like the pounding of a headache, just in words, and faint, but it seemed - negative.

Strange startled up and looked over at the terrarium. “Hey,” he said quietly, and Wong wasn’t sure if Strange was letting him understand what he was saying, or if it was just some - just that he knew what to listen to. “We’re just going to burn some documents. They belonged to someone who is gone, and I don’t want to throw them away.”

“A - respectful disposal?” Wong tried.

The snake had been sleeping in the ceramic log from the pet store, but it was now awake and leaning up against the glass. Definitely worried? Not happy?

“We could shred the documents,” Strange offered, “and compost them?”

Wong tried offering his hand to the snake, who climbed out to wind through his fingers. “You can see - it’s just papers.”

The snake rambled over them, and sort of hid behind a chair leg to stare at the fireplace.

Strange frowned. “Right. Tea, I think. He says he’d share tea, and then decide if he’s okay with it.”

“Are we negotiating with a snake?” Wong felt a bit bemused as he put the kettle on.

“Yes?” Strange smiled lopsidedly at Wong. “It doesn’t seem to be dangerous, you know. He also says he’d like that castle you saw at the pet store. For the pond end of the terrarium.”

Wong took a deep breath, and thought of the Acheri carving wood blocks with his aunt. If he'd seen that, when he was younger, instead of a demon sending his father flying, would he have wanted to learn martial arts? Would he have ended up here, in the end? Would he have agreed to the spirits when they approached him to kill a wizard king? "Sure, we can do that. Want to hear about what my aunt's up to? She thinks you should try tai chi too. I'm not sure what's the best answer on that."

Strange chuckled. "Not sure I've got the time to regularly attend, but I'm willing to learn."

So they had tea, and the serpent got a saucer of tea, and a chance to check out the cream and sugar (liked the cream, didn’t like the sugar,) and the slow stream of anxious grumbling calmed down.

Strange burned the paperwork in Wong’s barbecue at the apartment though.


	17. Chapter 17

“People at birth are naturally good-hearted. Their natures are similar, but their habits make them different.”

  
_Three Character Classic_ attributed to Wang Yinglin or Ou Shizi

After the third crossword demon (as Wong started calling them) showed up, Strange said he needed to do some research in realms that weren’t here. He asked Wong to watch the house while he was meditating. There was sort of a seriousness to this that Wong found unnerving. He knew, thanks to Strange's stories, that meditation of this sort would leave Strange utterly defenseless.

It had gotten to the point that it took a good hour or two for Wong to realize that he could’ve killed Strange, and that he wasn’t even considering it. There was nothing from the PTB recognizing that he’d totally forgotten his orders. Or decided that they were pointless.

Strange’s office had all the furniture shoved out of the way, and he was floating quietly. He said it’d take about seven hours, if he was lucky. He just asked Wong to hang around until midnight. Wong was planning on spending the night.

Midgardsormr woke up shortly after Wong made tea. At first, it was just the tank's water shifting, and then the rattling of the snake shifting around the gravel as it came over to the heat lamp.

“You want some, uh - I still don’t know what to call you,” he said to the tank.

The serpent vibrated something about being huge, and a serpent, but nothing concrete. He was watching the tea though.

“Come on out? I can make you a saucer. I found the cream.” Wong frankly wouldn't mind a distraction. The magic around Strange was omnipresent, now that he could recognize it, but right now it felt more like he was guarding a sacred sutra or something like that.

It was peaceful enough, settling in with a book and the quiet sounds of the house settling. Strange’s shop always smelled of perfume, incense, and leather. The front of the store was dark, and the kitchen's blue tiles were turning purple from the last bit of the sunset. It was warm enough to have the windows open, and Wong could hear kids playing in the park. He almost thought it was a kid when he heard a fairly clear “sleeping long.” But - it was the serpent.

“Strange, you mean? No, he’s meditating. He asked me to watch him sleep while he talked with -” How to explain it? Could the serpent even understand him? He kept feeling like he should fear the serpent. In a way, there was a certain power to realizing that he can trust anyone that Strange trusted, within reason. “With other worlds.”

The serpent rolled over to nest near the furnace to bask in the warmth. Well, that . . . that seemed harmless enough.

Wong looked out the window. “It’s . . . odd, you know. The PTB - the spirits that are telling me to do stuff. They’re magically powerful and they want me to do what they want. Messed up my life when I wasn’t doing what they want, and they made sense. I mean - some of it. They wanted me to kill him at first.”

The serpent did not seem surprised. “Orders?” was all he got out of the general buzz of feelings though.

“Yeah. I was told to make the world safer and kill a wizard king. But - the guy I met wasn’t making the world more dangerous. And if Strange is right, by doing some of what those spirits want, and following the spirit of the rules, I’m - gaining the ability to refuse to kill the guy.”

The serpent coiled over his hand and tasted his tea.

“I can refill your saucer, you know.” Wong said, trying not to picture how the shop and Strange would fare if that serpent wasn’t the size of a small garter snake.

The snake looked up at him and then leaned up to taste the air near his face. It was - a sensation like the snake - approved. Approved of following the spirit not the letter of the law. And of him.

“You really care about the guy. I knew the guy who was the Sorcerer Supreme before him. He was a good man too.”

As weird as it was, he kept talking. Midgardsormr seemed to kind of think in - simple blocks. People with power had orders, and they did not have power, but did have strength. Working around not having strength made sense to the serpent, as much as the serpent thought in ways that humans could.

When things calmed down, he looked up what and who the Midgardsormr was supposed to be. He knew about Asgard, and that there was a Loki there, and an Odin and a Thor. Saw Loki in the news, being ridiculous in ridiculous clothing, and ridiculously dangerous as well. Same for Thor, really, who still didn’t seem to know what a press conference was. But - Strange said nothing about Asgard in relation to the world serpent. And the world serpent didn’t know what Asgard was.

Strange said talking about something could make it true. Could it be that the Norse mythological stories, combined with the magic here, made the world serpent exist? Complete with a fear of fire, suspicions of people in power, and a quiet personality and intelligence all of his own?

The way that Strange talked about debt like it was a weapon was maybe why the serpent was even willing to stay in the shop.

Could his conviction that he did not wish to kill Strange make a reality where he was not required to do it?

The next morning, Strange woke him up with coffee. Wong had to go to work, so he never had a chance to ask. Either way, he knew he’d be back to talk with Strange no matter what. There was a delivery of rose water later. Strange wasn't sure they had a solution to the demon problem, but he said he found some possible answers. Wong threatened to check out the Persian cooking book again if they ended up with extra rose water, and Strange said technically he owed Wong for staying all night.

"Don't worry about it," Wong said. "I wanted to stay, and I fell asleep, so I wasn't really being a great guard, was I?"

"You were there." Strange grinned back at him. "I'm grateful."


	18. Chapter 18

“Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.”

Novalis 1798

Strange knew that the PTB called on Wong occasionally. Wong tracked it on his calendar. It also had check marks for days without magical creatures appearing, shorthand notes about casework, and important days like Valerie's birthday. He hadn't actually seen the PTB contact Wong before. The orders came from the PTB while Wong was carrying a flat of rose water. All Strange felt was the coiling magic around Wong, and louder than that, the alarm of the Midgardsormr.

“I - should go,” Wong said to Strange, talking half to the air and half to the fish tank. It was suddenly more full of the Midgardsormr, who’d nudged the top open so he could peer out at Wong.

Strange got to his feet from where he was working and reached over to fix Wong’s tie. If he was younger, he'd offer to come along, but in his experience, that just caused things to get worse. Showing support via force of numbers tended to be interpreted as threatening, particularly by spirits like the PTB. “They’re calling for you? You looked like the ceiling was talking to you, and I think Midgardsormr can hear it.”

Wong blinked at him rapidly and looked rather like he had someone yelling at him on the other end of the metaphorical phone. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure they’ll wait.”

“I will be safe,” Strange said, which wasn’t really the right word, since they were just moving rose water and dictionaries into the shop. “If you are not, call me?”

Wong just looked dazed as he stepped out.

Strange felt oddly useless as he finished his work. Clea had the idea that they could stop the portals summoning the demons if they could set up a spell to trace the mechanics of one. They'd need a demon to be there, of course, and to get rid of it as well. He was slowly narrowing down the options for how to trace the portals. The debts involved wouldn’t be too bad. Physical damage and intrusions into this realm were frowned upon, and the fact that the demons seemed to be targeting him helped.

Wong did not call.

Later, Strange flicked on the lights and set aside his reading. He didn’t have to keep up with paranormal papers in the area, but regional ones tended to be interesting and occasionally hitting close to the truth. He made dinner and Midgardsormr climbed out of his tank. It made a bulldog sized coil of a snake on the pillow warmed by the radiator. Strange heard Wong sigh as he stepped in the door.

“What were they worried about?” Strange asked. It was always dangerous to start to care about people. Much like killing flies with a sledgehammer, it was important to try to stay subtle, magically. In mundane matters, at least Strange could give all he wanted to give without risking harming people or crippling debt. Save for money concerns, of course, but that was different.

“Something about you contacting demons interdimensionally?” Wong shifted over to help serve. “You waited until I got back?”

“Lunch was huge,” Strange said. Wong looked awful, and the snake was humming with tension. It looked like Wong could feel that. “I can help verify a bit of that. I did talk to someone who is not human. Technically we’re wedded but marriage becomes quite different once you’re leaving Earth.”

“How so?” Wong asked. He sat down and slid a saucer of tea over to the Midgardsormr. “Isn’t she upset that you’re here?”

“She’s fighting a war with her uncle and a queen,” Strange pointed out. “I thought she would be, you know. We married - things were - Clea was being shoved around like a pawn between her mother, father, and uncle. She risked things to warn me that her uncle had plans for me. At the time, I didn’t even know her name. She was my student in magic for a while there.”

The snake hummed a complex mess. Mostly it sounded like Migardsormr worried about Clea’s present security.

Strange waved his hand. “No, no. She’s free now. They have a thing called the Flames of Regency. Sort of a right of kingship if the people believe in you. She had them, and she was powerful enough to drive her family away and take the throne. But there are still plots.”

“That sounds like a mess. The check your food for poison kind. You two fell in love, during that?” Wong gestured with his soup spoon. Wong looked like he was ravenous. Dinner ended up being a sort of Italian wedding soup, using up more of the eternal kale from the co-op.

“We did. Call it stress and forced companionship? Later we tried to talk about what it meant.” Strange’s mouth twitched. Clea was stunning, and a brilliant student. He often had companions in battle, but it was rare for him to fight with a student. Having the exact same kind of spell he would use cast to back up his own magic was sort of like feeling a perfectly fitting glove over his hand. They were literally at war, and half their talks were in shorthand since debt was omnipresent and also exhausting. “Did you know, in her culture, the most romantic thing, other than being physically close, is writing letters?”

“Those letters you’ve been writing.” Wong guessed.

“Exactly,” Strange said and gently moved Midgardsormr’s head off his wrist so he could eat. “We are not . . . trapped in wheels of fate here. It is by her choice that we wedded, and what that means is also by our choice. And in this case, we write.”

When Strange first met Wong, he would've guessed that Wong would scoff at the idea of a marriage based around correspondence. Wong’s eyes flicked over to the serpent, but he seemed to relax a little. “She knows about demons?”

“She believes that her uncle’s plotting has lead to the sudden increase in demon activity out here. We’ve been discussing how we could prove this, and how to curtail his plans.” Strange leaned to refill his bowl. “I’m not sure that’ll calm down your spirits though. Can we talk about this? Could you go out with me?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Wong said and looked down at his bowl like he couldn’t remember eating his soup. “I want to go with you. It feels like something’s going to give.”


	19. Chapter 19

“In the Egyptian city of Sais, there is a veiled statue of Isis. An inscription reads, ‘I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has lifted my mantle.’ To take off the veil of Isis is to know Nature, and in a magical sense, to open a veil of spiritual awareness in preparation for ceremonial magic.”

  
_History of Animals_ by Aristotle

Wong was assuming the “thing” that would give would be him. Strange called him up a day later with problems in a cemetery. There was an offended spirit, and signs that Clea’s uncle would be trying again with the demons. They got as far as a construction site on the road to the cemetery when Wong felt the magic stir.

The PTB wanted him to strike. They were alone. It would be easy.

A portal opened, and the next few minutes mostly involved Wong trying frantically to not be crushed as a demon surged out of it. Strange ducked beneath a flying jackhammer, and told him that it was definitely Clea’s uncle’s work.

He sounded just like he did on the roof of the hospital. He could've been talking about something utterly normal.

They ended up pressed up against a tipped-over bulldozer. It seemed to be a planned ambush, but for now, they were just dealing with one demon and a portal. Strange was poking at a map indicating that they'd probably have more portals as they approached an upcoming chokepoint.

That wasn’t the reason why they headed out there, of course. They had an issue with a quiet country road, and a furious spirit with a worn-down cemetery. It’d been moved at some point to build a larger road, but between neglect and some other entity. Strange was worried that if they triggered the ambush, they'd also bring damage to the cemetery.

Strange fumbled a bit to send a call in to a superhero group in the area, and Wong tried to tell him that Strange needed to be careful.

“How long on the spell?” Wong asked, trying to hold his handkerchief against his bleeding knuckles.

“Ten minutes? We really need to lure the demon away from the cemetery. Damaging the cemetery would make thing worse.” Strange offered Wong a hand up. “Ready to run again? If I can set up a circle, we could lure it our way and you could use the spell to try to seal it while I dodge. I’ve got a call in for help.”

“You . . . you really shouldn’t trust me like this,” Wong said. “You’ve got to understand, the PTB. They want me to kill you.” They want him to kill him now.

And Strange, to his amazement, flashed him a brilliant smile. “I know. You do not have to.”

It was like a switch being flipped. It was like the sun coming out of the clouds. Just a sudden lack of a _pull_ and the orders. Wong could feel the magic around him. And they got up to try again.

Thor showed up to help. Wong honestly couldn't imagine, four years ago, that he'd ever be able to say that. Or at least say that and not also have to fill out a ton of insurance paperwork for whatever monstrosity decided to destroy his town.

Thor was blond and massive, and he handled the demon and the cemetery negotiations with charm. Admittedly, he seemed convinced they were all comrades at arms in a battle which was to come or had already started, but respect and a good teammate is universal across cultures, really. 

Later, he asked about the terrarium, as they sat in the store, listening to a rainstorm. “I was informed you have the world serpent here. What would you do with this?”

Wong frowned in the middle of taping his knuckles. That sounded a lot more like a command or a regal request than just - talk. He suspected part of it was Thor's almost painful level of sincerity.

“My apologies,” Thor offered to his back. “People are worried what it could mean. This seems like a peaceful town, and I would not have Asgardian politics -”

“He seems happy here,” Strange said finally. “I owe you for the help, but the Midgardsormr does not know what Asgard is. At least not the Asgard you came from.” He was making coffee.

“So it’d be you guys bringing politics to him.” Wong felt weirdly - defensive? A guy who was strong past his comprehension, from an alien dimension and culture, sitting looking like a young awkward politician trying to manage a million things at once. “I’d say what he does is his own choice. He’s here by choice, and he’s not crushing this store by choice. And if your choices get him upset, he might.”

"So he's as large as the stories say." Thor flinched and made an apologetic gesture. “I forget. You are correct.” He looked at the water, and the couple of inches of tail peeking out of the glittery castle. “He does not know us at all?”

“Not that he mentioned. The magic here is twisted and odd,” Strange pointed out quietly. “He remembers people fearing him, and he wants quiet waters. Other than that, he has not inquired for much.”

“What has he wanted? If he is my brother’s child, even from some other realm -” Thor said and looked into the water. That, at least, did impress Wong.

Wong passed around the coffee mugs and he could see the serpent look back up at him. The words were a bit softer than usual. A hum like an engine out of tune instead of the throb of a migraine to his temple. He could not tell the intent of what the serpent was saying.

“I will tell my father,” Thor said finally, “that he is safe here and there is no need for him to be moved. Is there naught that he would want?”

“He’s fond of duckweed,” Strange said quietly. “Thank you.”

Wong tried later to talk about the PTB and his orders. Strange - just told him that it was fine. They were in this together. And . . . he trusted him. He could feel the magic around him, and not the pull of his orders.

Was it just that Strange said he could refuse? Or the sudden willingness to try? Did he only need to hear that he could be free for Strange (or his own self) to find the path to make it?

He still kept visiting Strange, because he wanted to. He had not heard the PTB at all.

A week later, Thor showed up, cheerfully talking about some battle against Venusian (or something like that) exploding frogs. He hugged the both of them like it'd been years, and then revealed that he brought duckweed. They sat, eating lunch, and watching Midgardsormr churn the water to froth chasing the little green flecks.


	20. Chapter 20

“There are ideal series of events that run parallel with real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect.”

Novalis 1841

Strange felt the warning signs before the door opened in the store, and he was already standing. It didn’t take that much to move his half eaten lunch behind the register and his tea moved safely out of sight. He'd set up warding around his shop, and thanks to working on the little hideaway in the fountain, he had warding there. He recognized first that there was someone magical in the town, and that they were powerful. It took a bit to recognize the exact signature he felt. “Things might get interesting here.”

Wong stopped in the middle of straightening out a box of hopelessly tangled charm bracelets. “Eh?” He had about six on his left arm, since he was sorting them by color. “What is it?”

“We’re about to have company,” Strange said. “You may want to head back. This could get to be a mess.”

The warding wasn’t good enough though, since instead of having plenty of time, Loki came in before Wong had time to get up. He was dressed too formally, and the fabric had that distinct air of looms that no modern designer had seen, but at least Strange wasn’t getting odd helmet horn holes in his door frame.

“I . . . .” Loki trailed off, looking at Wong, charm bracelets and all. His mouth twitched like he was debating and discarding half a dozen things he could’ve said. The door banged shut behind him with a jingle of bells. None of them jumped at the noise, but Strange was fairly certain they would’ve if the other wasn’t there.

Strange settled on, “Can I help you?”

Loki laughed. “Of all the greetings.” He crossed the shop, winding between the display of bookmarks and the cabinet of ceremonial tobacco. “The last time we met, I distinctly remember I left you with a room full of small piglets.”

“You did.” Strange leaned on the counter while Loki stole the gingersnap from beside his teacup.

“I’m here to . . . buy a book.” Loki’s mouth twitched again, but it was hard to say if it was humor or frustration. “It’s a book of poetry with magical significance. To Asgard. It’s pointless for you, of course.”

“Of course.” Strange looked over at the pile of books and the donation box for the women’s shelter. “Ten cents a book, a dollar for a bag of them.”

Loki looked at the donation box, and back at Strange. “You’re donating the profit to charity?”

“They’re not my books.” Strange sounded a bit more sharp to his ears than he should. “The owner’s missing or dead.”

Loki frowned as he avoided a book of rather florid sonnets. He picked up a book of watercolors instead. “I see. How did that happen?”

“It was during the Infinity Gauntlet affair. I do not know.” Strange really should keep his mouth shut.

Well - Loki didn’t joke about that, at least. He did reach out to tap the serpent’s fish tank though. “Someone told me that I’d enjoy this job, because the story was that you had the Midgardsormr in your shop. I did not think he would be in this small of a tank, or that it would be decorated with a rainbow of pebbles.”

“Don’t wake him up,” Wong said. He was working the bracelets off his arm behind his back.

“I’ll do what I want,” Loki snapped, but he didn’t tap the glass.

Strange kept his mouth shut this time, at least.

Loki stacked the book of poetry between a pretty terrible mystery, the watercolor books, and a romance. He seemed to be picking mostly on the interesting patterning of the bindings on the books. “You did not tell me.”

“I’m fairly sure he’s not from Asgard,” Strange said finally. “You made it fairly clear that we had nothing to discuss.”

Loki snorted. “You gave up those thoughts of converting me to simplistic notions of heroism?” He patted his pockets until he found two quarters and offered them to Strange. “I could’ve stolen this.”

“Yes.” Strange ferried the coins over, and Loki’s eyes never went to his shaking hands. He seemed fascinated by the tank.

Loki frowned and rocked back on his heels. He had his hand on his pile of books, but he neither moved to leave, nor picked them up. “Thor went fishing for him with a cow head. In those stories with your people. You could have been heroes, and stopped me with claims of having him.” He watched Strange and Strange kept quiet.

Wong stepped around the counter to stand near Strange and reached to nudge the books closer to Loki. “He’s not from Asgard. He doesn’t know a thing about it. If he had a father, he isn’t you.”

“I will talk with him.” Loki indicated the tank and looked at them, chin raised. It seemed he’d prefer a response. Or to be alone.

Wong asked carefully, “Do you want to talk with this guy, Midgardsormr?”

The water stirred as the serpent peeked out of his new castle under the wet section of the tank. Loki looked like he also had a migraine like pain listening to him talk. The serpent seemed okay with this, but he also seemed to recognize that they were on edge. “Orders?” was all that was really concrete. Strange would need to use magic to try to get a clearer translation, and well - they were in Garry's Glen.

Wong picked up Strange’s plate. “Yeah. He’s under them to be here, but it’s not about you. You - if you need us, you’ll call us.”

“Your mortals amaze me,” Loki murmured to Strange. “Your comrade thinks I am like you.”

Strange shrugged as he headed to the back. “I’d just sooner not have him grow to full size in here because you decided to push his temper.”

"He is -" Loki trailed off, staring at Wong as he headed to the door. "If you gave him your magic, he'd be a better sorcerer than you."

"I'm content." Wong flipped the store sign to closed. Strange ate his lunch, and Wong paced.

And Loki perched on Strange’s counter and stared intently at the tank until it was past closing time.

He left town, with five books under his arm, and without saying a word to them.

Strange told Wong later, that he had no idea if they won or lost that day. Wong made dinner and added a check mark to his calendar for another day without the spirits talking to him. He'd talked, before Loki showed up, about moving in to the rooms above the shop, since his lease would be up soon. They'd need to get a parking space, but other than that, it wouldn't be too hard.

“You’re in a good mood,” Strange said.

“I am,” Wong said with a smile. “What’s your plans?”


End file.
